The United Nations Relief and Works Agency said it has been barred from bringing any humanitarian aid, including medicines and medical supplies, into the Gaza Strip for more than five months. The agency warned that stocks of food and basic hygiene items such as soap, shampoo and sanitary pads have been exhausted and called for the immediate reopening of land crossings to allow relief to enter "at scale". A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross separately described "unimaginable" conditions in the enclave, noting that children are scavenging through rubbish and crying from hunger. Aid agencies argue that the current reliance on airdrops—maintained despite earlier warnings that they are expensive and inefficient—cannot meet the population’s needs. Health specialists caution that widespread malnutrition threatens to inflict lifelong damage on Gaza’s 1 million children, underscoring the urgency of restoring a continuous flow of food, medicine and hygiene supplies. Humanitarian groups insist that only a sustained, ground-based delivery system coordinated by the UN can avert further deterioration.