HAMILTON, Canada

The UN said Thursday that nearly half of humanitarian aid missions in the Gaza Strip were blocked, impeded or delayed by Israel in the last week.

Citing the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the "delays and impediments of humanitarian movements within Gaza continue, with movements that are approved by Israeli authorities still taking hours to complete."

"Teams have been left waiting on roads that are often dangerous, congested or impassable," he added.

Noting that "out of 89 attempts to coordinate movements with Israeli authorities across the Gaza Strip, only 59% were facilitated" between last Wednesday and Tuesday, Dujarric reported that "another 26% were initially approved but then impeded on the ground; 8% were denied outright and 7% had to be withdrawn by the organizers."

He said among the 23 impeded movements, five were eventually accomplished, including missions to collect supplies from crossings and evacuate patients.

But the remaining 18 were not completed, he added.

On the humanitarian situation, Dujarric said UN colleagues are "deeply concerned about the risk of a looming Israeli offensive on additional parts of Gaza City," stressing that "the impact of a full-blown offensive would be beyond catastrophic, not only for those in the city but for the entire Gaza Strip."

According to Dujarric, UN's population tracking teams indicated about 1,300 people fled from northern to southern Gaza on Monday and Tuesday, bringing north-south movements since Aug. 14, when Israel's offensive plan was announced, to 20,000.

Altogether, roughly 60,000 displacements from Gaza City have been recorded, he said.

"Across the Gaza Strip, hundreds of thousands of families continue to live in overcrowded, undignified and unsafe conditions at displacement sites," he added.