The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees said Monday that nearly 100 humanitarian aid trucks headed for Gaza were "violently looted" over the weekend.
In a post on the social media platform X, the U.N. agency said a convoy of 109 trucks had set out from the Kerem Shalom border crossing in southern Gaza on Saturday when drivers were forced at gunpoint to stop and unload supplies. According to the agency, 97 trucks were lost.
The New York Times reported Monday that members of the convoy were injured and other vehicles sustained extensive damage during the incident.
The trucks, which were carrying food supplies from UNRWA and the United Nations World Food Program, had originally been scheduled to deliver the aid on Sunday, but the Israel Defense Forces told the convoy to leave a day prior "at short notice" and "via an alternate, unfamiliar route," UNRWA said, according to the Times.
"Due to critical shortages of flour, all eight UN-supported bakeries in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis have been operating at diminished capacity for weeks," the agency wrote on X. "Many have been forced to shut down entirely. Without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over 2 million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive."
UNRWA reportedly said the incident illustrated the "challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza," despite the severity of the need and months of attempts to deliver it to the area by aid agencies.
Israel has previously accused Hamas of commandeering supplies from aid convoys for its militants, but it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the most recent looting incident.
According to the Times report, UNRWA blamed the frequent looting of aid convoys on the collapse of law and order in the war-torn region, the rising sense of desperation among Gazans, and Israeli authorities who "continue to disregard their legal obligations under international law" to ensure that adequate humanitarian aid reaches the Palestinians there.
Now in its 14th month, Israel's retaliatory war against Hamas began when the militant group launched a surprise attack on Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The humanitarian situation in Gaza has continued to decline as the conflict drags on.
According to data released publicly by the IDF earlier this month, Israel was allowing substantially less humanitarian goods into the territory from Oct. 1 through Nov. 10 than it had in the month of September.
Israeli officials have denied hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid, faulting aid agencies for failing to deliver the supplies that have been admitted to Gaza and blaming looting of aid convoys by Palestinians.