A convoy of 109 trucks was violently looted after entering Gaza on Saturday, resulting in the loss of 98 trucks, an official of the United Nations Refugee Agency in Palestine (UNRWA) said.

The looting is one of the worst such incidents in Israel’s more than 13-month-old assault on the besieged and bombed enclave, Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer for UNRWA, said on Monday.

The convoy carrying food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Program was instructed by Israel to leave at short notice on an unknown route from the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing with Gaza.

“This incident highlights the seriousness of the access challenges to bringing aid into southern and central Gaza,” Wateridge said, adding that there were injuries in the incident.

“The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages will worsen, further endangering the lives of more than two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive,” she said.

UNRWA did not say who carried out the looting.

Israel says it is doing everything it can to ensure that enough aid gets into the coastal enclave and that it is not preventing humanitarian aid from entering.

However, a UN aid official said on Friday that access to aid in Gaza had reached a low point, with deliveries to parts of the enclave’s besieged north almost impossible.

In the north – namely Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahia – virtually no food has been allowed in for more than a month since Israeli forces renewed a ground assault on the area, which has been completely cut off from the rest . of the Gaza Strip.

Looming famine

Earlier this month, experts from a food security monitoring group said famine was imminent in the north or may already be happening.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that there are between 75,000 and 95,000 people still in northern Gaza.

The area is hit by Israeli forces. According to Palestinian health officials, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the renewed offensive began last month.

Israel has killed at least 43,922 Palestinians since it launched its devastating attack on Gaza on October 7, 2023. This followed a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in which 1,139 people were killed.

As the shelling intensified, the Israeli army issued new waves of forced displacement orders for residents of northern Gaza.

But many Palestinians have refused to leave despite catastrophic humanitarian conditions and near-daily shelling. Some fear that if they leave northern Gaza, they risk being attacked by Israeli soldiers and snipers.

Health officials say the siege has crippled the health system in northern Gaza and is also preventing medical teams from reaching bombed sites.

Israel has banned UNRWA from operating in the country and severed relations with it, alleging that the organization has links to Hamas, which UNRWA denies. The agency warned on Monday that halting its activities in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem would prevent it from coordinating massive aid efforts inside Gaza.

“There is no plan B,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.

The only alternative to UNRWA’s work in Gaza is to allow Israel to carry out services there, Lazzarini said, repeating calls for countries to resist the Israeli ban on the organization, which is due to take effect in January.

Lazzarini is in Geneva for a strategic meeting with donors. The ban, he said, is one of the darkest moments in the agency’s history.

“We have drawn the attention of the member states that now the clock is ticking… We must stop or prevent the implementation of this bill,” he told reporters.

The agency’s orderly suspension drew global condemnation, including from Israel’s main ally, the United States.

UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.