People in Gaza described begging for bread, paying 50 times more than usual for a single can of beans and slaughtering a donkey to feed a family as food aid trucks were unable to reach most parts of the bombarded Palestinian territory, Reuters reports.

The UN humanitarian office OCHA said that limited aid distributions were taking place in the Rafah area, close to the border with Egypt, where almost half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is now estimated to be living.

“In the rest of the Gaza Strip, aid distribution has largely stopped, due to the intensity of hostilities and restrictions on movement along the main roads,” it said.

“Aid? What aid? We hear about it and we don’t see it,” said Abdel-Aziz Mohammad, 55, displaced from Gaza City and sheltering with his family and three others, about 30 people in total, at the house of friends who live further south.