THIS is the harrowing moment starving Palestinian people overrun food trucks carrying aid into Gaza as the humanitarian crisis grows.

Israel challenged the United Nations on Sunday to carry out its pledge to deliver more food to the Palestinian enclave after pausing fighting.

Distressing footage shared by Turkish news site TRT shows a sea of starving Gazans desperately climbing onto vehicles to reach food.

Some individuals appear to manage to grab boxes of aid, while other malnourished people seem to scramble to safety due to the heaving crowds.

Israel is facing condemnation from international aid groups as well as governments due to the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Aid groups warned that Palestinians are on the brink of famine, with one in five children suffering from malnutrition.

The UN warned that civilians in the besieged enclave are becoming “walking corpses”.

But prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that his country isn’t employing starvation as a cynical tactic.

He also denied that starvation was occurring at all in Gaza – despite harrowing footage of aid sites being overrun, images of emaciated children, and local authorities reporting deaths from malnutrition.

Netanyahu told a conference in in Jerusalem: “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza.”

Israel has previously blamed Hamas for the suffering of Gaza’s population.

Following two months of restricting UN aid convoys in favour of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the IDF said “humanitarian pauses” in fighting were being implemented to let in more UN aid.

They also said “secure routes to enable the safe passage of UN and humanitarian aid organisation convoys delivering and distributing food and medicine to the population across the Gaza Strip” had been set up.

Three Jordanian and Emirati supply planes were also permitted to drop aid into the starving strip, but the quantity delivered of 25 tonnes is said to be tiny compared to what the UN can deliver on the ground.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said 60 trucks of aid had been dispatched – but this amount fell short of Gaza’s needs.

WFP Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, Samer AbdelJaber said: “Sixty is definitely not enough. So our target at the moment, every day is to get 100 trucks into Gaza.”

The Programme explained how almost 470,000 people in Gaza are enduring famine-like conditions, with 90,000 women and children in need of specialist nutrition treatments.

Netanyahu said, making it unclear whether the lifting of restrictions on UN convoys came due to mounting international pressure: “Whichever path we choose, we will have to continue to allow the entry of minimal humanitarian supplies.

“There are secured convoys. There have been all along, but today it is official. There will be no more excuses.”

On Monday, the Gaza health ministry said at least 14 people had died in the past 24 hours of starvation and malnutrition, bringing the war’s death toll from hunger to 147, including 89 children.

Last week, more than 100 aid agencies warned that mass starvation was spreading across the Palestinian enclave.

The military also said Saturday that it had connected a power line to a desalination plant, expected to supply daily water needs for about 900,000 Gazan people.

Israel’s foreign ministry said the military would “apply a ‘humanitarian pause’ in civilian centres and in humanitarian corridors” on Sunday morning.

The announcement came after indirect ceasefire talks in Doha between Israel and Hamas were broken off with no deal in sight.

The UN said that humanitarian pauses in Gaza would allow “the scale up of humanitarian assistance”.

The Israeli military stressed that despite the humanitarian steps, “combat operations have not ceased” in the Gaza Strip.

Israel is keeping up its heavy bombardment in the face of global ceasefire pleas and huge protests in Tel Aviv.