Some Gazans are now reduced to drinking sewage water and eating animal feed, the WHO’s regional chief, pleading for increased aid access immediately to the besieged territory.

Hanan Balkhy, the World Health Organisation’s Eastern Mediterranean regional director, also warned that the bombardment had a knock-on impact on healthcare across the wider region.

And the impact on children will have severe lasting effects, the child health expert told AFP in an interview at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

Inside Gaza, “there are people who are now eating animal food, eating grass, they’re drinking sewage water,” she said.

“Children are barely able to eat, while the trucks are standing outside of Rafah.”