Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour has also spoken at the UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

He told the council that “time is our enemy” as “hunger eats away at our children”.

Mansour appealed to the council to reject Israel’s plan for “the so-called distribution of humanitarian aid”, saying it continues to pursue “illegal objectives by other means”.

“That plan has been rejected by all UN agencies and all humanitarian organisations as it is just a continuation of the weaponisation of aid,” he said.

It drives “desperate civilians and humanitarians into militarised zones to receive or distribute aid at the peril of their lives, by counting calories”, and “denying aid to many”.