The UN relief coordination office, OCHA, said on Tuesday that this marks the longest period without aid or commercial supplies entering the Strip since the conflict began in October 2023.

“Right now, it is probably the worst humanitarian situation ever seen throughout the war in Gaza,” OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told journalists at a briefing in Geneva.

Over 2.1 million Gazans are facing acute shortages of food, medicine, fuel, and clean water.

However, humanitarian supplies are stockpiled just across the border, including nearly 3,000 trucks of life-saving aid prepared by the Palestine refugee agency (UNRWA), which Israeli authorities are refusing to allow in.

Deliberate, man-made suffering

“Hunger is spreading and deepening – deliberate and man-made,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.

“Gaza has become a land of desperation…humanitarian aid is being used as a bargaining chip and a weapon of war.”

The agency warned supplies inside Gaza are nearly all gone, with food stocks running dangerously low and only 250 food parcels left.

Flour has run out. Bakeries are shutting down, hospitals are collapsing without fuel or medicine, and essential items have soared in price.

“Two million people – a majority of women and children – are undergoing collective punishment,” Mr. Lazzarini said.

“The siege must be lifted, supplies must flow in, the hostages must be released, the ceasefire must resume.”

Aid effort continues

Despite these conditions, UNRWA continues to operate on the ground, providing water, collecting solid waste, and running vital health services.

Eight health centres and 39 medical points are still providing around 15,000 consultations daily. A blood donation drive to support local hospitals in urgent need of transfusions is also underway.

The destruction of key heavy machinery on Tuesday following reported Israeli airstrikes has brought rescue and recovery efforts to a standstill, making it even harder to reach the estimated 11,000 bodies still trapped under the debris.

According to local authorities, the strikes put a halt to all solid waste and debris removal operations, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists at a briefing in New York.

Until recently, bulldozers and other excavation equipment had been used in painstaking efforts to recover bodies from the wreckage.

One bulldozer operated by Atif Nasr – who before the war worked building and repairing roads – had become vital in the grim task of extracting the remains of loved ones from the rubble.

He was interviewed by a UN News correspondent in Gaza before the strike but now his grim but vital work has come to a standstill after his vehicle was destroyed.

Months trapped in rubble

The Dahdouh family managed to recover the remains of their son, Omar, from the ruins of their home, almost a year after he was killed in an airstrike which levelled their seven-story building.

Standing at the site, Omar’s brother, Moayad, shared the family’s ordeal.

“His body remained trapped under the rubble for nearly a year. After the war, we tried to retrieve him, but with the building so large and with no heavy machinery available, it was impossible.

“We searched everywhere for a bulldozer to reach the ground floor – where Omar had been – but during the war, Israeli forces destroyed or burned all the bulldozers or excavators that could have helped us.”

A decent burial

In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, the Dajani family continues to live in what’s left of their destroyed home, where the bodies of three of their children remain buried.

Their father Ali remembers the time they died with a heavy heart.

“We fled to the beach area during the bombings. When we returned, the house was gone – and our children were still under the debris. We are forced to live here, but this is not life. It is unbearable,” he told our correspondent.

“We have no clean water, no food. We are lost. All we ask is to recover our children’s bodies. To bury the dead is sacred. That is all we want.”

Just days ago, Mr. Dajani spoke as diggers worked nearby to clear away the debris. That effort, too, has come to a halt for now.

A mounting humanitarian crisis

The UN estimates that approximately 92 per cent of all residential buildings in Gaza – around 436,000 homes – have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the conflict.

The resulting debris amounts to nearly 50 million tonnes – an overwhelming quantity of rubble that would take decades to remove under current conditions.

Humanitarian organizations warn that the delay in debris removal and body recovery is not only deepening psychological trauma across Gaza but also threatens to become a public health and environmental catastrophe.

In total, 3.6 million of the “most vulnerable” people in Ethiopia stand to lose WFP food and nutrition assistance unless funding arrives urgently, warned Zlatan Milisic, the UN agency’s Country Director.

“Over 10 million people in Ethiopia are acutely food insecure. This includes three million people displaced by conflict and extreme weather. Malnutrition rates are alarmingly high,” he told journalists in Geneva via video-link.

Child wasting scare

More than four million pregnant women, breastfeeding women and young children need treatment for malnutrition in Ethiopia. In Somali, Oromia, Afar and Tigray regions, child wasting has passed the 15 per cent emergency threshold.

WFP had planned to reach two million mothers and children with lifesaving nutrition assistance in 2025 but it has been forced to cut costs after receiving only half of last year’s funding.

“What is particularly important now is that our nutritious foods are running out,” Mr. Milisic explained. “So, we are stopping that programme unless something comes really fast and we are looking and we are hopeful, but nothing has come yet.”

Ration cuts the norm

In the first three months of the year, WFP provided food and nutrition support to more than three million people. This included 740,000 children and pregnant and breastfeeding women suffering from malnutrition.

In common with other humanitarian crises impacted by funding cuts, the UN agency has reduced food rations to reach the most vulnerable communities. For the past 18 months this has meant giving 60 per cent rations to most of the 800,000 refugees WFP serves and 80 per cent rations to “displaced and food-insecure – some severely food-insecure – Ethiopians for the past nine months”, Mr. Milisic continued.

Citing access challenges for humanitarians in Amhara region where there ongoing conflict is reported, the WFP official noted that aid operations had been disrupted, threatening relief supplies for more than 500,000 people. “Car hijacking, threats and theft are on the rise and pose serious risks to staff safety and impact the delivery of lifesaving assistance,” he continued.

Hostile environment

Media reports indicate that fighting is also continuing in Oromia region and tensions are rising in Tigray, where civil war killed an estimated 500,000 people from 2020 to 2022 as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPFL) fought the federal army.

Despite the challenging funding and security situation, WFP continues to provide daily school meals to 470,000 children every month. This includes 70,000 children from refugee communities – with conflict-affected and food-insecure areas the focus of relief efforts in northern Ethiopia.

WFP also helps communities to prepare and protect their livelihoods in drought-prone Oromia, Somali and Southern regions, targeting over 200,000 people with early warning messages and cash transfers.

The agency requires $222 million between now and September to maintain its operations and to reach its target of 7.2 million people this year.

“We have the teams, the logistics, the capacities in place, partners, our staff; what we lack are the resources to act and the scale that this situation demands,” Mr. Milisic said.