The United Nations’ World Food Programme has announced a pause in food and aid deliveries to northern Gaza after its drivers faced gunfire and violence from desperate residents swarming the trucks.

The convoys “faced complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order”, according to a statement from the WFP.

The WFP had attempted to resume aid deliveries in northern Gaza after a three-week pause following a strike on an aid convoy from the Israeli military.

The WFP said one in six children under the age of two are acutely malnourished and people are dying of hunger-related cases, and the situation is even more dire in northern Gaza.

“In these past two days our teams witnessed unprecedented levels of desperation,” the WFP said.

Hamas’s government media office described the WFP decision as a “death sentence” for hundreds of thousands of people who are in the northern half of Gaza.

The office called for the WFP to withdraw its decisions and for all UN agencies to return and avert “catastrophic consequences of the famine” there.