Gazans described begging for bread, paying up to 50 times more for a can of beans and one family slaughtered a donkey to eat, as aid trucks are unable to reach most areas of the bombed enclave.

Israel continues to pound the entire Gaza Strip in its quest to destroy Hamas, and the conflict makes it nearly impossible for convoys to get through to the starving people.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) earlier reported that a limited distribution of essential items was made in the Rafa area, near the border with Egypt, where almost half of Gaza’s population is estimated to have taken refuge. “In the rest of the Gaza Strip the distribution of aid has practically stopped, due to the intensity of the hostilities and restrictions on movement on the main roads,” he added.

“Aid; What help? We hear her but we don’t see her,” said Abdel-Aziz Mohammad, 55, who was displaced from Gaza City and fled with his family and three others – 30 people in total – to the home of friends further south. “I had a big house, two refrigerators full of food, electricity and water. After two months of war, please for a loaf of bread,” he added by phone to Reuters. “This is the war of hunger. They (the Israelis) forced us out of our homes, destroyed our homes and businesses and drove us to the south where we will either die from their bombs or from starvation.”

The head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said earlier that hungry residents stop the aid trucks, take the food and eat it on the spot.

In northern Gaza, which bore the brunt of Israel’s military offensive during the first phase of the war between October 7 and November 24 (when the ceasefire began), fighting has resumed and almost no aid has flown in since December 1 in the area. Youssef Fares, a journalist from Jabalia, said it is so hard to find basic food items such as flour that their prices have skyrocketed: they are selling 50 to 100 times higher than in early October.

“This morning I was looking for a loaf of bread and couldn’t find it. All that’s left in the market is candy for the kids and some canned beans, which sell for 50 times the price,” he wrote in his Facebook “diary.” “I saw someone who slaughtered a donkey to feed hundreds of his relatives,” he added.