Residents of the Gaza Strip have reported deprivation in the face of the UN's warning that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are facing starvation.

A desperate father told dpa on Saturday that the contents of the food parcels from The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were getting smaller by the day.

Zaher Ramlawi, who says he comes from Shejaiya, a neighbourhood of the city of Gaza in the north of the coastal region, fled to Rafah in the south with his wife and their five children because of the war. They are living there in a makeshift tent.

The family only eats one meal a day, said Ramlawi. "This includes a few pieces of bread and tinned food such as beans and some beef." He has lost 12 kilograms since the outbreak of the war, said the father of the family. He and his family have no access to clean drinking water, which is very expensive. He therefore either drinks donated water or sometimes the salty and unhealthy groundwater.

A woman living in a tent in Deir al-Balah told dpa that her children had already fallen ill due to the lack of food and water.

"To get something to eat, I wait in a long queue at the UNRWA school," said Hayam Abu Samra. There she receives tinned food, biscuits and some water. "But they don't give you flour to bake bread." Food prices have risen dramatically since the war. "I have no money to buy food or water," she said. Even the children only eat once a day as a result. "Most of the time they sleep hungry."

In the wake of the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip, the humanitarian situation in the sealed-off coastal strip is becoming increasingly catastrophic.