DUBAI: Israel will allow foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza starting on Friday, Israeli army radio quoted a military official as saying.

An Israeli military spokesperson did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the report.

The Gaza health ministry says more than 100 people have died from starvation in the Palestinian enclave since Israel cut off supplies to the territory in March.

Israel, which has been at war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza since October 2023, lifted that blockade in May but has restrictions in place that it says are needed to prevent aid from being diverted to militant groups.

In the first two weeks of July, the UN children’s agency UNICEF treated 5,000 children facing acute malnutrition in Gaza.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday Gaza was suffering man-made mass starvation caused by a blockade on aid into the enclave.

Almost a third of people in Gaza are “not eating for days,” the United Nations food aid agency told AFP on Friday, saying the crisis has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation.”

The Rome-based World Food Programme had previously warned of a “critical risk of famine” in war-raged Gaza, over which international condemnation of Israel’s actions has been growing.

“Nearly one person in three is not eating for days. Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment,” a WFP statement said.

It said that 470,000 people are expected to face “catastrophic hunger” — the most critical category under the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase classification — between May and September this year.

“Food aid is the only way for people to access any food as food prices are through the roof,” the WFP said.

“People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance.”

Aid groups have warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in Gaza, which Israel placed under an aid blockade in March amid its war with Hamas.