The humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to worsen after more than two months of Israeli bombardment and forced relocation of people to the south of the enclave.

On Sunday, hungry and desperate Palestinians jumped on aid trucks to collect food and other supplies in the Rafah area of ​​Gaza, near the border with Egypt.

Dozens of Palestinians surrounded the aid trucks after they entered Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, forcing some to stop before getting in, pulling down crates of food and water and carrying them away or passing them on to the crowds below.

Some trucks appeared to be guarded by masked people with sticks.

“The humanitarian situation is very desperate, not only for the residents of the city of Rafah, but also for the one million displaced Palestinians here who are left hungry, thirsty and traumatized as the war rages on,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Rafah .

Mahmoud said the amount of aid allowed inside the strip was not sufficient and had forced Palestinians into “survival mode.”

“People are without anything – without a home, without access to food, without water and without medical care,” he said.

“So the scenes at the Rafah border crossing are a natural reaction: if people starve, if they are hungry, this is what we will see.”

“Desperate for food”

The United Nations warned this week that people in Gaza are so “desperate for food” that they are stopping aid trucks and immediately eating what they find.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, who recently visited the strip, said the residents had “never” experienced hunger of this kind, despite their long and difficult history of suffering under the Israeli siege.

“I saw with my own eyes that the people of Rafah started helping themselves directly from the truck out of complete desperation and immediately eating what they took out of the truck,” Lazzarini said Thursday.

On the same day, Carl Skau, deputy head of the UN World Food Program (WFP), confirmed that almost half of Gaza’s people are affected to starvewithout knowing where their next meal will come from.

According to the WFP, half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are starving as the Israeli military’s assault on the southern part of the enclave increases and the population is cut off from supplies.

Drone footage from the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday showed Gaza Emergency Relief volunteers preparing a huge stew.

Aid deliveries entering Gaza through Rafah, the only entry point on the Egyptian border, are a fraction of pre-conflict levels despite increased needs.

Aid shipments arriving through the border crossing have been slow to deliver what the people of Gaza need because of delays in truck checks.

Rafah is home to more than 12,000 people per square kilometer and is home to an estimated 85 percent of the people displaced across Gaza since attacks began on October 7.

On that day, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli territory, killing about 1,140 people and capturing another 240.

Since then, Israel’s bombing has killed 18,787 people and injured another 50,897, probably in the thousands buried under the rubble.

Although thousands sought shelter at the Rafah border crossing remains the goal from Israeli air strikes.

According to Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud, a massive explosion occurred overnight in the Geneina district of Rafah, killing two people and attacking and destroying homes.

“Many injured people were taken to the Kuwaiti hospital here,” he said. “We’re talking about more than 50 people injured.”