The fight for survival continues in northern Gaza as Israel’s devastating siege and bombardment of the area enters its 23rd day.

An Oxfam official told Al Jazeera on Sunday that Israel is using starvation as a weapon in its genocide against Palestinians and that the UK-based NGO has been unable to reach people in the north because of Israel’s bombing campaign.

Mahmoud Alsaqqa, who is Oxfam’s lead for food security and livelihoods in Gaza, warned that some Palestinians are “starving” in northern Gaza and more people will die in the coming days.

“It’s nothing. You’re talking dozens of days of not getting supplies,” he said, adding that most Palestinians in the area rely on aid.

Aid agencies say about 96 percent of Gaza’s population faces high levels of food insecurity. According to UNICEF, nine out of 10 children do not have the nutrition they need for growth and development. At least 37 children died of malnutrition or dehydration in a year of war.

The United Nations says Israel has blocked 83 percent of food aid from entering the Strip since the war began. About 50,000 children under the age of five are said to need urgent treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year.

Oxfam’s warning came as Israeli forces shelled several neighborhoods in northern Gaza on Sunday and humanitarian officials sounded the alarm over an ongoing ground offensive by Israeli forces that is forcibly displacing tens of thousands of residents in the area.

At least 35 people were killed in Beit Lahiya on Saturday after the Israeli army targeted five buildings in the northern Strip. Another 10 people were killed in a separate attack in Beit Lahiya.

Israel’s strikes on the northern Gaza towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya have so far killed around 800 Palestinians during the ongoing siege, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said at least 35 people were missing and feared to be under rubble or “vaporized” by the force of Israeli bombs.

In addition, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia killed several people and wounded others early Sunday, Palestinian medics said.

“People were told to evacuate the Jabalia refugee camp to avoid being bombed, but when they reached the areas away from Jabalia, in the central and western parts of northern Gaza, they were bombed and maimed in the areas they were told. evacuate to,” Mahmoud said.

“Israeli soldiers are forcing people out of evacuation centers and setting them on fire,” he added.

“Dying in a Genocide”

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said on social media platform X that “the entire population of Gaza is at risk of dying in a genocide that was announced and carried out under our watch.”

Albanese was responding to a statement by UN humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya on Saturday, warning that “the entire population of northern Gaza is at risk of dying” under Israel’s siege.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Saturday that ongoing Israeli evacuation orders and restrictions on the entry of essential supplies into the north had left the civilian population in “horrendous circumstances”.

“Many civilians are currently immobilized by fighting, destruction or physical coercion and now have no access to even basic medical care,” it said.

Palestinian health officials said the siege had paralyzed the health system in northern Gaza and blocked medical teams from reaching bombed sites.

Israel says its forces have returned to northern Gaza after more than a year of war to flush out Hamas fighters who have regrouped there. The Israeli military claimed to have “eliminated more than 40 terrorists” in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantled infrastructure and located “large amounts of military equipment”.

But Mansour Shouman, a Palestinian journalist who has lived in Gaza, said Israel wants to force Palestinians to leave the northern part of the Strip to create settlements there.

“That area went through three weeks of very heavy land invasion attempts by the Israelis. You all hear what’s going on with the medical services there. Hear all of you what happened to the implementation of the Master Plan, which seeks to eliminate the Palestinian presence in the northern Gaza Strip… and push them further south to create a buffer zone for the Israelis and then to create settlements there,” Shouman told Al Jazeera.