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The head of the UN’s emergency food relief agency on Sunday issued an urgent appeal from the Rafah border crossing for safe, expanded humanitarian access to Gaza as critical food supplies in the ravaged enclave reach dangerously low levels.

Gaza has become a “graveyard” for children with thousands now killed under Israeli bombardment, while more than a million face dire shortages of essentials and a lifetime of trauma ahead, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.

UN relief chief Martin Griffiths, who has been visiting Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, spoke to families in Gaza over the phone from east Jerusalem on Tuesday and said that what they have endured since the start of Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ deadly 7 October attacks is “beyond devastating”.

The UN chief on Tuesday said levels of aid allowed into the stricken Gaza Strip are “completely inadequate” to meet the rising needs of civilians trapped there amidst the intensifying fighting.

Secretary-General António Guterres also reiterated his call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” between Israeli forces and militants from Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and other militant groups.

UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed Egypt’s decision on Wednesday to accept some of the most critically sick and injured from the stricken Gaza Strip for treatment.

“We have been working with Egypt’s Health Ministry on planning for medical evacuations and will continue to support,” said the World Health Organization (WHO) head.

UPDATED: With the Israel-Palestine crisis in its fourth week, UN aid teams on Monday highlighted the mounting pressure on north Gaza hospitals where patients and health workers remain, amid reports of expanded Israeli ground operations.

The vicinities of Shifa and Al Quds hospitals in Gaza city and of the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, have been bombarded over the weekend, UN humanitarian affairs coordination office OCHA said.

Following four failed efforts to reach consensus on a Gaza resolution, the UN Security Council met in emergency session again on Monday afternoon (New York time) to discuss the ongoing crisis, amid continuing Israeli bombardment and reported ground incursions.

The Council meeting has ended, and here are the key points of the day focused on the UN's humanitarian effort:

The crisis sparked by the Hamas terrorist attack and ongoing Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip is a "political and humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions” said the UN’s independent human rights expert for the Occupied Palestinian Territory this week.

Relief agencies warned on Sunday that civil order is starting to break down in Gaza after thousands of desperate people stormed UN-operated warehouses and other aid distribution centres in the ravaged enclave, taking wheat flour, hygiene supplies and other basic survival goods. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres began his official visit to Nepal by extending deep condolences to the families of the 10 Nepalese students killed in the terror attacks by Hamas in Israel, and once again called for the protection of all civilians in Gaza, where, he said, “the situation is growing more desperate by the hour.”

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday adopted a major resolution on the Gaza crisis, calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities.”

The resolution breaks the deadlock at the UN over a response to the Israel-Palestine crisis which erupted on 7 October, where Member States on the Security Council have failed to reach agreement on four draft resolutions.