The main UN aid agency in besieged Gaza has warned it will have to stop operations by the day’s end because it is running out of fuel.

On the 19th day of Israeli air and artillery strikes and a near-total land, sea and air blockade of Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA has warned that operations are at breaking point.

“If we do not get fuel urgently, we will be forced to halt our operations in the Gaza Strip,” said the agency which provides aid to 600,000 displaced in Gaza, where many families have slept in the open.

Aid groups have warned that more people will die if medical equipment, water desalination plants and ambulances stop running in Gaza, where the only power plant went offline weeks ago.

Patients are already being treated on the floors of hospitals overwhelmed with thousands wounded by bombing. The Red Cross has warned that hospitals, once the generators stop running, “turn into morgues”.