WHO says Gaza health system in Gaza 'more than on its knees'

GENEVA (Reuters) - People in the Gaza Strip are risking their lives to find food, water and other supplies such is the level of hunger and despair amid the unrelenting Israeli assault, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

"The system in Gaza is on its knees, it's more than on its knees," WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva. "All the lifelines in Gaza have more or less been cut."

Lindmeier said this had created a "desperate situation", as seen on Thursday, when more than 100 people seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza were killed.

Gaza health authorities said Israeli forces shot dead the Palestinians as they waited for an aid delivery. Israel blamed the deaths on crowds that surrounded the aid trucks, saying victims had been trampled or run over.

"People are so desperate for food, for fresh water, for any supplies that they risk their lives in getting any food, any supplies to support their children, to support themselves," Lindmeier said.

While aid is reaching southern parts of the Gaza Strip, it is too slow to avert a hunger crisis even there. Aid barely makes it to northern areas that are further from the main border crossing and only accessible through more active battle fronts.

"The food supplies have been cut off deliberately. Let's not forget that," Lindmeier said.

Israel has said the failure to get enough aid into Gaza to meet humanitarian needs is due to U.N. distribution failures.

A senior U.N. aid official told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that one quarter of the population of Gaza is one step away from famine and widespread famine could be "almost inevitable" without action.

(Reporting by Cécile Mantovani and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Angus MacSwan)