While WFP is providing food assistance to more than 1 million people in Gaza each month, the need was so acute that such efforts amount to “a drop in the ocean of needs”, the agency said in a post on social media.

The UN’s food relief agency also added a humanitarian ceasefire was needed immediately.

Israel has consistently denied aid convoys to northern Gaza, according to the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

It has called the reopening four bakeries in northern Gaza thanks to “critical” World Food Programme support a “drop in the ocean”.

In a post on X, UNRWA said Israeli authorities continue to prevent its food convoys from reaching the north of the besieged and bombarded territory.

“We need safe & unimpeded access. Food supplies are a matter of life & death,” it added.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Palestinian territory since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas which killed nearly 1,200 people.

Nearly 34,200 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 77,000 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

The mass graves contained some people stripped naked with their hands tied, raising concerns over potential war crimes, the U.N. said, describing the bodies as “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste.”

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Tuesday that investigators must have complete access to the sites and ensured safety from the Israeli military.

Mass grave sites were discovered at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, containing more than 300 bodies. The Khan Younis burial site was constructed because Palestinian civilians could not perform burials due to ongoing military attacks by Israeli forces, Palestinian Civil Defense announced.

“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said Tuesday.

“And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are ‘hors de combat’ (incapable of engaging in combat) is a war crime.”

Türk stated any investigation into the mass graves should be independent of the Israeli government “given the prevailing climate of impunity”, adding that he was “horrified” by the reports.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani added that 30 bodies were discovered at the Al-Shifa Hospital site, including some bound and tied.

She stated that there could be “many more” victims “despite the claim by the Israeli Defense Forces to have killed 200 Palestinians during the Al-Shifa medical complex operation”.

The Israeli military has again stepped-up strikes on southern Gaza in recent days, as it hopes to push into the city of Rafah. A total of 34,000 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and children — have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Much of Gaza has now devolved into famine.