With the flow of food and other assistance slowed to a trickle, a UN report citing Gaza’s health ministry said 25 people have now died from malnutrition and dehydration, most of them children, AFP reports.

Aid groups have been warning of the risk of famine in Gaza for weeks, and the United Nations has reported particular difficulty in accessing the territory’s north for deliveries of food and other aid.

“We are running out of time,” Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said Monday. “If we do not exponentially increase the size of aid going into the northern areas” of Gaza, she said, “famine is imminent”.