CAIRO, September 13. /TASS/. The Israeli side has frustrated nearly half of attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to the northern Gaza Strip, an official of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said.

"Forty-eight percent of our attempts to reach the northern part of the Gaza Strip have failed due to the Israeli side’s refusal," the Al-Qahira Al-Ekhbariya television channel quoted him as saying.

According to the OCHA official, his colleagues "proposed lost of solutions of how to deliver more humanitarian aid to the enclave’s population," but the Israeli side has ignored most of them.

The current situation in the Gaza Strip "weakens the UN ability to render humanitarian and medical assistance to the enclave’s residents," he stressed.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 240 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.