The health ministry in Gaza has said another 98 people were killed overnight in Israeli strikes on Beit Lahia in the north to Rafah in the south, AFP reports.

After more than four months of shortages inside the besieged Gaza Strip, the World Food Programme said this week its teams had reported “unprecedented levels of desperation”, while the United Nations warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine.

In northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, bedraggled children held out plastic containers and battered cooking pots for what little food was available.

Supplies are running out, with aid agencies unable to get into the area because of the bombing, while the trucks that do try to get through face frenzied looting.

“We the grown-ups can still make it, but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?” one man said angrily.

Residents have resorted to eating scavenged scraps of rotten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves.