Less than half of the UN aid convoys planned for Gaza’s hunger-ravaged north have made it so far this month, despite repeated appeals from the international community to ramp up relief to more than one million people on the brink of starvation, UN humanitarian agency has said.

In its latest update, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the first two weeks of March saw just 11 out of 24 missions “facilitated” by Israeli authorities.

“The rest were either denied or postponed,” OCHA continued, noting that five convoys were refused entry and eight were postponed.

“Facilitated missions primarily involved food distributions, nutrition and health assessments, and the delivery of supplies to hospitals,” OCHA said, repeating warnings that “humanitarian access constraints” continue to “severely affect the timely delivery of life-saving assistance, particularly to hundreds of thousands of people in northern Gaza”.