“I get screwed on every shipment,” Mohammed, a Gazan trader, told Reuters. He said he has to fork out more than $14,000 for each truck of food he brings into the besieged enclave to pay sky-high transport costs, bribes to middlemen and protection from looters. That’s up from $1,500-$4,000 before the conflict began in October.

“It’s barely worth my while. But I need food, my neighbours need food, the whole of Gaza needs food.”

Mohammed said he doesn’t like it, but he’s forced to hike prices of some fresh food like dairy products, fruit and chicken to 10 times their normal value just to break even, though he knows this puts them out of reach of many hungry Gazans.

He and 17 other people interviewed by Reuters, most of them traders and aid workers in Gaza with direct knowledge of the supply situation, described a chaotic system that often makes it too dangerous or costly for business owners to import food, even as aid agencies warn of the growing risk of famine.

Many of the people requested their full names be withheld to speak freely about sensitive matters, with traders like Mohammed saying they feared reprisals by local gangs or being blacklisted by the Israeli military for speaking out.