Gaza City, Gaza - Israeli forces are "systematically" blocking access to people in need in Gaza, preventing the delivery of desperately needed aid, the UN said Tuesday.

It has become nearly impossible to carry out medical evacuations and aid deliveries in northern Gaza and increasingly difficult in the south, said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

All planned aid convoys into the north have been denied by Israeli authorities in recent weeks, with the last allowed in on January 23, according to the World Health Organization.

Making matters worse, even convoys cleared in advance with Israeli authorities have repeatedly been blocked or come under fire.

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Laerke pointed to an incident last Sunday when a convoy, jointly organized by the WHO and the Palestinian Red Crescent (PCRS), to evacuate patients from the besieged Al Amal hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis, was blocked for hours and paramedics detained.

"Despite prior coordination for all staff members and vehicles with the Israeli side, the Israeli forces blocked the WHO-led convoy for many hours the moment it left the hospital," Laerke told journalists in Geneva.

"The Israeli military forced patients and staff out of ambulances and stripped all paramedics of their clothes," he said, adding that the convoy, which was carrying 24 patients, remained blocked for seven hours.

"Three PRCS paramedics were subsequently detained, although their personal details had been shared with the Israeli forces in advance," Laerke said, adding that just one had been released so far.

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"This is not an isolated incident," he stressed. "Aid convoys have come under fire and are systematically denied access to people in need."

Such "inadequate facilitation for the delivery of aid throughout Gaza means that humanitarian workers are subject to unacceptable and preventable risk of being detained, injured or worse", Laerke said.

Meanwhile, the UN expert on the right to food Michael Fakhri told the Guardian that Israel is deliberately starving millions of Palestinians by blocking aid deliveries and even attacking fishing vessels.

"In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide," he said.

Israel has been ordered by the International Court of Justice to prevent any actions that could lead to a genocide in Gaza and to facilitate humanitarian access to the strip it has besieged since the October 7 Hamas attack, killing some 30,000 people so far.