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More than 1,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed since May while try­ing to get food in the Gaza Strip, most­ly in the vicin­i­ty of aid sites run by an Is­raeli-backed Amer­i­can con­trac­tor, the Unit­ed Na­tions hu­man rights of­fice said Tues­day. Is­raeli strikes killed 25 peo­ple across Gaza, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal health of­fi­cials.

Des­per­a­tion is mount­ing in the ter­ri­to­ry of more than 2 mil­lion, which ex­perts say is at risk of famine be­cause of Is­rael’s block­ade and on­go­ing 21-month of­fen­sive. A break­down of law and or­der has led to wide­spread loot­ing and con­tributed to chaos and vi­o­lence around aid de­liv­er­ies.

Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which is part of the Hamas-run gov­ern­ment and staffed by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, said Tues­day that 101 peo­ple, in­clud­ing 80 chil­dren, have died in re­cent days from star­va­tion. It did not pro­vide pre­cise di­ag­noses, but peo­ple in hunger crises of­ten die from a com­bi­na­tion of mal­nu­tri­tion, ill­ness and de­pri­va­tion.