Large groups of women and children are scavenging for food among mounds of trash in parts of the Gaza Strip, a UN official said on Friday following a visit to the Palestinian enclave, Reuters reports.

“I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Jordan. “Acquiring basic necessities has become a daily, dreadful struggle for survival.”
Sunghay said the UN had been unable to take any aid to northern Gaza, where he said an estimated 70,000 people remain following “repeated impediments or rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities”.
Sunghay visited camps for people recently displaced from parts of northern Gaza. They were living in horrendous conditions with severe food shortages and poor sanitation, he said.

Looting has also depleted aid supplies within the Gaza Strip, with nearly 100 food aid trucks raided on 16 November.