Enlarge image

People point to aid supplies falling from the sky on the beach in Gaza: "Just one step away from famine"

Photo: Mohammed Salem / REUTERS

Israel has been taking action against Islamist fighters in the Gaza Strip for more than four months - covering the narrow coastal strip with bombings and ground offensives.

The encircled civilians endure catastrophic conditions.

Representatives of the United Nations have now warned in the UN Security Council that thousands of people will die from starvation.

A CNN video shows families fighting for dropped food rations with batons and whips.

576,000 people in the region - a quarter of the population - are "only one step away from famine," said Ramesh Rajasingham, senior representative of the UN emergency aid program Ocha, on Tuesday in the most powerful UN body.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is having major problems getting aid supplies to the Gaza Strip, which is largely sealed off by Israel.

Increasing breakdown of civil order

According to UN figures, 1.7 out of 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip are staying in emergency shelters.

Carl Skau from the World Food Program (WFP) said conditions in the Gaza Strip made it difficult to deliver humanitarian supplies.

Helpers would be hindered and convoys would be looted.

The UN emergency relief office OCHA also reports signs that public order is collapsing.

There are apparently “elements of criminal activity,” said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke in Geneva on Tuesday.

He named gangs that wanted to enrich themselves by delivering aid.

According to him, trucks carrying relief supplies are often stopped and emptied just a few hundred meters behind the border.

"There is understanding that desperate people take what they can," said Laerke.

But there are apparently gangs who take material from convoys that later turns up on black markets.

"Of course that should never happen," he said.

This is in connection with the increasing breakdown of civil order in the Gaza Strip, where war has been raging for almost five months.

There is practically no police presence anymore.

Laerke ruled out the possibility that UN convoys travel with armed guards.

That's not how the United Nations worked.

Meanwhile, a CNN report shows desperate people paddling self-made rafts and boats into the open sea to reach the aid rations that have been dropped there.

Back on the beach, they defend the food, sometimes with batons, sticks and belts converted into whips.

A man tells the US broadcaster that he is happy that he got a ration for his family.

“But what about all the others who came away empty-handed?” he asks.

In the Gaza Strip, people are suffering from hunger and thirst because neither the food nor drinking water delivered is enough for the 2.2 million people in the coastal area.

OCHA and other aid organizations criticize Israel for not allowing enough aid deliveries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing ahead with a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and restricting humanitarian aid despite ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

mrc/dpa