The ‘spectre of death’ looms over Gaza, the UN warned yesterday as families continued to flee an expected Israeli invasion.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have tried to escape from northern Gaza where Israel has warned it will attack, despite fears the unprecedented exodus is bringing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Supplies of food, water, fuel and medicines are running dangerously low after Israel imposed blockades on the Palestinian territory and aid convoys were barred from entering its southern border with Egypt.

The UN said it could no longer provide water in its shelters, warning: ‘Gaza is being strangled… Gaza is running out of life.’

Yesterday it was reported Israel had re-opened the water supply in south Gaza after an intervention by US President Joe Biden.

Hospitals said they were at crisis point and trying to move the seriously ill and wounded would amount to a ‘death sentence’

As Israel’s war with Hamas entered a second week, the Palestinian death toll from airstrikes reached 2,670, including at least 700 children.

It means that, even before Israel’s imminent land invasion, Gaza’s death toll is almost double the 1,400 murdered in the Hamas raids that sparked the latest crisis.

More than 9,000 people have been wounded and up to 1,000 are feared trapped or missing under buildings destroyed by airstrikes.

Hospitals said they were at crisis point and trying to move the seriously ill and wounded would amount to a ‘death sentence’.

Humanitarian agencies warned that many more would die if aid and other supplies were not allowed into Gaza.

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‘The spectre of death is hanging over Gaza,’ said Martin Griffiths, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs. ‘With no water, no power, no food and no medicine, thousands will die. Plain and simple.’

UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, said Gaza faced an ‘unprecedented human catastrophe’ and Israel’s blockades meant it could no longer provide aid.

Commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said: ‘Gaza is being strangled and it seems the war right now has lost its humanity.’ The Israeli Defence Forces have dropped leaflets into northern Gaza telling residents to flee to the south via designated routes which it says it will not attack between 10am and 1pm.

More than 9,000 people have been wounded and up to 1,000 are feared trapped or missing under buildings destroyed by airstrikes

But authorities in Gaza claimed airstrikes had hit a convoy of civilians on a supposed safe evacuation route, killing 70. Israel’s military denied it was responsible for the explosion on Friday and suggested Hamas was to blame.

Hospitals in northern Gaza reported they had been overwhelmed by casualties from airstrikes and had no electricity or key medical supplies.

Videos posted online showed bodies wrapped in white cloth stored in empty ice cream freezer trucks after hospitals, morgues and cemeteries ran out of space.

Medical centres in the south reported they had also been hit by airstrikes. The World Health Organisation condemned the Israeli evacuation order as a ‘death sentence’ for those receiving care who were too ill to be moved.

Doctors and nurses were risking their own lives to stay with their patients, officials said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope have called for greater protection for civilians caught in the conflict.