A convoy of 109 UN aid lorries carrying food was violently looted in Gaza on Saturday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) says.
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Ninety-seven of the lorries were lost and their drivers were forced at gunpoint to unload their aid after passing through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing with southern Gaza, in what is believed to have been one of the worst incidents of its kind.
Eyewitnesses said the convoy was attacked by masked men who threw grenades.
Unrwa commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini did not identify the perpetrators, but he said the "total breakdown of civil order" in Gaza meant it had "become an impossible environment to operate in".
Without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen for the two million people depending on humanitarian aid to survive, according to Unrwa.
A UN-backed assessment warned earlier this month that there was "strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip".
It came after Israeli forces launched a major ground offensive in the north and the UN said fewer aid lorries had entered Gaza last month than at any time since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023.
Saturday's looting was first reported by Reuters news agency, which cited an Unrwa official in Gaza as saying that the convoy was instructed by Israeli authorities to "depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route" from Kerem Shalom.
Gaza's Hamas-run interior ministry said its security staff killed "more than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing aid trucks" in an operation carried out in cooperation with "tribal committees", a network of traditional family clans.
Lazzarini said he could not comment on the route when asked at a news conference in Geneva on Monday, but he confirmed the looting and said: "We have been warning a long time ago about the total breakdown of civil order."
"Until four or five months ago, we still had local capacity, people who were escorting the convoy. This has completely gone, which means we are in an environment where local gangs, local families, are struggling among each other to take control of any business or any activities taking place in the south. It has become an impossible environment to operate in."
He added that hundreds of people desperate for food had tried to storm the Unrwa-run vocational centre in the southern city of Khan Younis because they thought the aid had been delivered there.
source: bbc