As tens of thousands of Palestinians starve as war rages on in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of pallets of food – from packets of rice to bunches of bananas – sit in the sun on the Israel-Gaza border, just a few miles away from hungry families.

Aid agencies are still struggling to get vital food into southern Gaza and blame growing lawlessness for making it too dangerous to receive and transport goods.

“The looting is big enough now,” says George Petropoulos, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza. He estimates that last Tuesday three quarters of the goods were stolen to the trucks entering from the crossing.

UN officials report that vehicles are systematically attacked and they are stopped by armed gangs, particularly those who smuggle cigarettes, which are sold on the black market in Gaza for exorbitant sums. Trucks bringing fuel into Gaza have also been targeted recently.

“Major decisions have to be made about what we’re going to do about the political order in Gaza and who’s going to see to it,” says Mr Petropoulos.

On a media tour of the Kerem Shalom crossing, the Israeli military agency responsible for operating the crossings, Cogat, told reporters that it did not set any limits on the amount of aid that could go to Gaza. We were shown what was said to be a backlog of more than 1,000 aid trucks that had undergone security checks and were awaiting collection from the Gaza side.

“This is largely due to the fact that international organizations have not taken sufficient steps to improve their distribution capacity,” said Cogat spokesman Shimon Freedman.

He accused the UN – which is the main supplier of aid to Gaza – of having insufficient trucks, as well as needing to “increase manpower, extend working hours, increase storage” and take other “logistical and organizational steps”. . The United Nations and aid groups, however, deny claims that they are understaffed, pointing to the difficulties of operating in an active war zone.

“We have hired dozens of new staff and hundreds of volunteers to distribute aid. We’ve delivered 28 million meals and six million medical treatments – like that [προφανώς] we can find manpower together,” says Sean Carroll, president of American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera).

But he says increasing workers doesn’t help when “war makes receiving goods too dangerous or the roads are impassable. When there is not enough fuel and there are not enough trucks or spare parts inside Gaza.”

About a million Palestinians, most of whom had already been displaced by the fighting, were forced to flee, deepening the humanitarian crisis. At the same time, humanitarian organizations lost access to important storage and distribution centers.

Since Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, Egypt has banned its use, saying it is no longer safe for humanitarian work. Aid and fuel are now being flown to Kerem Shalom.

According to UN figures, in May an average of 97 aid trucks entered Gaza, and in the first two weeks of June, the number had dropped again to 89 trucks.

In Khan Younis, Gazans tell the BBC that no amount of international aid is enough for them now. “When we were in Rafah, from time to time, we saw help. Since we came here 20 days ago, we haven’t seen anything yet,” says Mahmoud al-Bish, who says he is struggling to feed his two children.

Locals describe a vicious cycle as heightened desperation drives people to loot incoming aid trucks. It appears that some donated items such as sunflower oil and sugar are sold at market stalls.

“Today, the country has become chaotic, we no longer receive aid vouchers and when aid comes, we steal it,” says a man named Hassan.

Israel has opened three more crossings into Gaza, bringing aid to the northern part of the strip, where the UN has warned there is a higher risk of famine.