"What we see today are shelters with no capacity, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean drinking water, no proper sanitation and poor nutrition for people already mentally and physically exhausted: a textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster."

Further complicating aid deliveries, two major roads in Gaza have been declared off-limits to UN teams and trucks, Hastings said.

Hastings has her base in Jerusalem, but Israel informed the United Nations last week that it would not renew her visa, accusing her of not being "impartial".

In time of need

China had recently shipped eight trucks of aid supplies, including cans, biscuits, milk, honey, and drinking water to Egypt's Arish city, which will then be transferred to the coastal enclave via the Rafah border crossing, said Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang in Cairo on Sunday.

He said China has actively played its role as a responsible major country since the eruption of the latest Israel-Palestine conflict, and had previously announced it would provide food, medicine and other urgent humanitarian assistance to the enclave.

Diab al-Louh, Palestine's ambassador to Egypt, extended the sincere thanks and respect of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian people to China for kindly providing help in times of need when the Gazan people are mired in a humanitarian disaster.

On Tuesday, residents and journalists on the ground in Gaza said the intense Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza included areas where Israel had told people to seek shelter.