The UN agency that delivers aid to Palestinians has said it is suspending deliveries through the main border crossing between Israel and Gaza due to security concerns.
Unrwa head Philippe Lazzarini said two recent convoys had been looted by armed gangs near the Kerem Shalom crossing and called on Israel to maintain law and order.
Israel has previously said it is facilitating the passage of aid to Gaza and accused Hamas of hijacking and stealing supplies.
Kerem Shalom is the main route for delivering aid to the more than two million people in Gaza, which the UN has warned is on the brink of famine.
Recent weeks have seen a series of increasingly violent thefts by criminal gangs, which aid workers say now pose the biggest obstacle to the distribution of goods.
On November 16, a convoy of 109 trucks carrying food was attacked by masked men who held the drivers at gunpoint before stealing 97 of the trucks.
A notorious Gaza criminal family later blocked the main road leading from Kerem Shalom for two days, erecting iron barriers and reportedly shooting at trucks trying to access an aid distribution point.
Aid workers and local residents have also claimed that armed men are operating within sight of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in a restricted area on the Israel-Gaza border.
Announcing the disruption to deliveries, Mr Lazzarini said the road away from the intersection “has not been safe for months”, citing the theft of another five trucks on Saturday and last month’s incident.
The announcement also followed the deaths of three people employed by World Central Kitchen (WCK), a food charity, and two others in an Israeli attack on Saturday.
Israel said the target of the attack was a WCK employee who took part in the October 7 attacks.
“Delivering humanitarian aid should never be dangerous or turn into an ordeal,” Lazzarini said.
He said there had been a “breakdown of public order” and that the responsibility to protect aid workers lay with Israel.
“They must ensure that aid flows safely to Gaza and refrain from attacks on humanitarian workers,” he said.
Israel has opened a number of other crossings into central and northern Gaza in recent months following international pressure to increase the flow of aid, but Kerem Shalom remains the one through which most aid enters Gaza.
During his speech to the UN in September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that his government was allowing the equivalent of “more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman and child” into Gaza.
He accused Hamas of stealing aid deliveries and selling food at exorbitant prices as a means to maintain control in the Gaza Strip.
Last month, a review of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification – administered by the UN and a group of international charities – found that the number of aid shipments entering Gaza was lower than at any time since the current conflict began in October 2023.
It warned that the “humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip [was] extremely serious and rapidly deteriorating,” adding that, in a “reasonable worst-case scenario, there was a risk of famine for the entire Gaza Strip.”
The review said: “immediate action [was] required of all actors directly participating in the conflict, or influencing its outcome, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation.”
