A TOP aid group accused the Israelis today of “suffocating” humanitarian support for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, Ahmed Bayram, said the people of Gaza are suffering from a massive shortage of humanitarian supplies.

Mr Bayram said: “I think, at this rate, Israel is suffocating the support for these people,” adding that Gaza needs 25 supply trucks to enter each week instead of the “10 or 11” that bring aid into the enclave now.

He said the Israelis are not “only constraining access, the roads and the safety of the people and the aid workers, but also there is a systematic attempt here to keep people in the cold and keep them starving.”

In the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, the Israeli army has reportedly continued to target agricultural plots which has caused widespread destruction and worsened the already dire humanitarian situation facing the Palestinian people.

The World Health Organisation reported on Sunday that it had managed to drop off some food, fuel and medical supplies to the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

A WHO aid worker said the agency had delivered 400 food parcels for the patients and staff at the facility, as well as fuel to operate generators, and medical consumables and supplies, including blood units.

The aid worker also said a team from Mercy International will be deployed at the hospital “for one month.”

Kamal Adwan is one of the last remaining partially functioning hospitals in the north of the Strip. Attacks last week killed its intensive care unit director and wounded dozens of medical staff.

The United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Sunday that Gaza now had the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world after more than a year of Israel’s war on the Palestinians. He said that many were “undergoing surgeries without even anaesthesia.”

Meanwhile the Israelis have stepped up their arrests of Palestinians on the occupied West Bank.

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society said 12 arrests had been made across Ramallah, Hebron, Tubas, Qalqilya and Tubas as well as the occupied East Jerusalem.

The number of arrests by Israeli forces of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza began has surpassed 11,900, the report said.