A UNITED NATIONS aid chief today warned the devastating Israeli attack on Palestinians in Gaza is a “wildfire” that threatens to consume the entire region.

As the brutal Israeli collective punishment of the Palestinians enters its fifth month, humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator under-secretary General Martin Griffiths set out “five facts you need to know” about the situation in the devastated Palestinian territory.

The Gaza Health Ministry said that the Palestinian death toll has now reached 27,585 with about 66,978 wounded. The ministry warned that the figure is likely to be much higher as many thousands are still missing, believed trapped or killed beneath bombed-out buildings.

Gen Griffiths posted on the X social media site that the population of southern Gaza’s Rafah has “increased five-fold” and families who are trying to escape the fighting have been packed into shelters and are now sleeping in the open.

He also said that the situation in Gaza is a “disaster in the making” for public and mental health and that conditions are so bad that “humanitarian aid alone is not enough.”

Gen Griffiths also warned that indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas by the Israelis and depriving Gaza’s population of the essentials for survival “may amount to war crimes.

“The conflict is a wildfire that threatens to consume the West Bank, Lebanon and the wider region.”

He said: “This war must end.”

Meanwhile, the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied territories Francesca Albanese condemned an attack by the Israeli military on a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) truck carrying humanitarian aid in Gaza, saying it “undermines desperate relief efforts.”

UNRWA has been facing a massive funding crisis after some of its main international donors, led by the United States, cut their funding over allegations that a dozen of its thousands of staff may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas attack.

The truck came under fire from the Israeli navy as it waited to carry food supplies into northern Gaza, where people are facing starvation.

Ms Albanese said: “Targeting humanitarian aid convoys is a flagrant international humanitarian law violation.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly ordered his military officials to come up with an alternative to UNRWA by the end of the week.

The UN has repeatedly warned that defunding UNRWA will worsen the humanitarian crisis for millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza and across the region.