The Gaza Strip’s four main universities shut down Monday after officials said students couldn’t get to class because of critical fuel shortages.

University officials said attendance rates were down by at least 60 percent Monday, prompting the closure. It affects more than 45,000 students and will last until Thursday.

Officials said they would put together an emergency education plan that could include conducting some lectures over the Internet and radio.

“This is a genuine crisis,” said Ali al-Najjar, an official from Azhar University, which is affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement.

The Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip is suffering crushing fuel shortages. Israel is Gaza’s sole fuel provider, and in recent months, the Jewish state has reduced supplies to try to pressure Palestinian militants to halt their rocket fire into southern Israel.

Shortages were aggravated recently after Gaza fuel distributors stopped selling the reduced amounts that Israel was providing to protest the cutbacks. Israel then closed its only fuel transfer terminal last week after Palestinian gunmen attacked the site, killing two Israeli workers.

Cars lie idle on Gaza streets, and many of the vehicles still running use fuel alternatives: cooking gas, mixtures of vegetable oil, diesel and kerosene.

Hamas has seized on the shortages to play up Palestinian suffering. Many Palestinians in Gaza complain that Hamas is hoarding supplies _ something the Islamic militant group denies.

An Israeli security official said the crisis was Hamas “propaganda” and that Hamas could solve the problem by picking up fuel supplies lying idle at the depot.

Hamas has controlled Gaza since June 2007, when its militants routed forces loyal to Abbas, who now heads a Western-backed government based in the West Bank.

Hamas has continued attacking Israeli forces along the border and firing rockets at Israeli towns, and allows Gaza’s other militant factions to do the same.

Israel has sent tanks, troops and aircraft into Gaza _ killing 16 Palestinians, including at least six civilians, since Wednesday’s fuel depot raid.

Bassam Sakka, dean of students at the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University, said the fuel crisis has become steadily worse but plans are in the works to help students.

“The administration will put together an emergency plan to see how we can continue,” he said.

Only 40 of al-Najjar’s 200 students attended their Islamic law lecture on Monday at Azhar University. He said even where transport was available, prices are too expensive for the poorest students.

A trip from the southern town of Rafah to Gaza City _ where universities are located _ used to cost $1.70. The same trip now costs between $2.80 to $4. Most of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents live on less than $2 a day.

“This is a catastrophe, but a part of it is created here,” al-Najjar said.