The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says civil order is breaking down in the Gaza Strip.
Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday in Geneva that many lorries carrying relief supplies are being looted, and drivers threatened. Businesses no longer wanted to make lorries available for aid deliveries.
To further illustrate the catastrophic situation on the ground, Lazzarini said that 10 children and young people were losing one or both legs every day because of the war. These figures don't include hands or arms, he added.
In a speech to the aid organization's supervisory board on Monday, Lazzarini described the situation on the ground as "hell."
"In the last nine months, we have witnessed unprecedented failures of humanity," he said, according to the speech transcript.
More than two million Gazans are living in "a nightmare from which they cannot wake."
The "catastrophic levels" of hunger there is the result of human behaviour. "Children are dying of malnutrition and dehydration, while food and clean water wait in trucks."
In his speech, Lazzarini called for the "critical role" of UNRWA to be protected. It must be able to continue its work until a political solution is in sight, he said.
The UN considers Israel to be an occupying power and therefore that Israeli security forces therefore have an obligation to maintain law and order in Gaza. Since its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel no longer sees itself as an occupying power.
UNRWA made headlines in January because Israel said that 12 of its employees were involved in the massacre on October 7, and that the organization as a whole had been infiltrated by Hamas.
An audit report by independent experts later concluded that UNRWA had established "robust" mechanisms to uphold its principle of neutrality.