A convoy of 109 trucks was violently looted on Saturday after entering Gaza, resulting in the loss of 98 trucks, an official from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has said.

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

The convoy carrying food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Programme was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from the Karem Abu Salem [Kerem Shalom] crossing with Gaza.

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

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

UNRWA did not specify who carried out the looting.

In a statement, Hamas decried the incident and said anyone caught aiding such looting would be treated with “an iron fist”.

Israel claims it does all it can to ensure that enough aid enters the coastal enclave, and that it does not prevent the entry of humanitarian aid.

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

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

Looming famine

Earlier this month, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is 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 being pounded 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 assault on Gaza on October 7, 2023. That followed a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed.

Along with stepping up the bombardment, the Israeli army has issued new waves of forced displacement orders for residents of northern Gaza.

But many Palestinians have refused to leave despite the catastrophic humanitarian conditions and the 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 healthcare system in northern Gaza and is also blocking medical teams from reaching bombarded sites.

Israel has banned UNRWA from operating in the country and has cut ties with it, claiming the organisation has ties to Hamas, which UNRWA denies. The agency cautioned on Monday that a halt to its activities in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem would block 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 run services there, Lazzarini said, repeating calls for countries to resist the Israeli ban on the organisation, which is set to come into effect in January.

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

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

The ordered suspension of the agency sparked global condemnation, including from key Israeli ally the United States.

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