The children displaced to south Gaza were craving chicken, but all their mother had left to feed the family for the day was a tin of peas donated by a man who took pity on her when he saw her crying.

Left homeless by Israel's military offensive against Hamas, like most of Gaza's 2.3 million population, Tahany Nasr was in a tent camp in Rafah focused on one thing only: how to find enough food and water to get everyone through another day.

She said her children had lost weight and were getting dizzy spells because they were not eating enough.

"I've been begging to feed my children and don't find anything. I go to Social Affairs, they say go to the mosque. I go to the mosque, they say go to the Affairs," she said, referring to Gaza's welfare ministry which normally organises distributions of basic goods like flour to people in hardship.

Hunger has become the most pressing of the myriad problems facing hundreds of thousands of displaced Gaza Palestinians, with aid trucks able to bring in only a small fraction of what is needed, and distribution uneven due to the chaos of war.

Some trucks have been stopped and looted by people desperate for food, while swathes of the devastated territory are beyond their reach because access roads are active battlegrounds.

Even in Rafah, which has a crossing to Egypt through which aid trucks enter and is an area where the Israeli army has told civilians to seek refuge, the dearth of food and clean water is so severe it is causing people to lose weight and get ill.