Just a dozen humanitarian aid trucks have been allowed to distribute water and food in the northern Gaza Strip in the past two and a half months, the international non-governmental organization Oxfam said on Sunday, sounding the alarm of a further deterioration of the situation in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

“Of just 34 trucks carrying food and water that were allowed to enter the northern Gaza Strip in the past two and a half months, deliberate delays and systematic obstruction by the Israeli military meant that only a dozen managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians,” Oxfam said in a statement. Its count includes deliveries made as of the previous Saturday.

In three of these cases, “as soon as food and water were distributed to a school where the population had taken refuge, a hasty evacuation was necessary and there was shelling a few hours later,” the NGO added.

Israel tightly controls all humanitarian aid shipments destined for the enclave, and the 2.4 million are desperately needed. Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation has been described as catastrophic, since the outbreak of war triggered by an unprecedented Hamas incursion into Israeli territory on October 7, 2023.

Israel has been repeatedly accused of committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, especially before the international justice by various countries, at the initiative of South Africa. The Israeli government angrily rejects the accusation.

The UN General Assembly, for its part, approved last Thursday, with a large majority, a resolution asking the International Court of Justice (IC) in The Hague to rule on Israel’s humanitarian obligations towards the Palestinians.

Oxfam and other international humanitarian organizations have been “constantly prevented from distributing vital aid” in the northern Gaza Strip since October 6, when Israel escalated its bombardment, according to the NGO.

“It is estimated that thousands of people remain stranded but, with humanitarian access blocked, it is impossible to count with certainty,” Oxfam said.

“In early December, humanitarian organizations working in Gaza received calls from vulnerable people, trapped in homes or shelters, facing a lack of water or food,” he added.

Hamas’ October 7, 2023 raid against southern sectors of Israeli territory killed more than 1,200 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

At least 45,259 Palestinians have died in the 444th day of a large-scale Israeli military operation, most of them civilians, according to the latest figures from Hamas’s health ministry in the Gaza Strip, which are deemed reliable by the UN.