The UN Palestinian refugee agency, which is the main UN agency in Gaza, said that six months of Israel’s war in Gaza meant “6 months of never-ending displacement” for the Palestinians in the territory.

UNRWA said on X that “around 1.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes”, with it providing shelter for thousands of families with nowhere else to go.

Famine is “projected and imminent” in the northern half of Gaza, a UN-backed report said last month, and according to Oxfam, since December, the number of people in the Palestinian territory facing “catastrophic levels” of hunger has nearly doubled.

The vast majority of the population has been displaced by Israel’s war and much of the healthcare infrastructure in the besieged enclave destroyed.