More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation” was spreading across Gaza, adding to growing calls for Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave, the New York Times reported.

The joint statement is the latest attempt to draw attention to a growing hunger crisis in Gaza. It was released after 28 governments, including longtime Israeli allies like Britain, France and Canada, on Monday condemned the “drip feeding of aid” and said that civilian suffering had “reached new depths.”

Doctors Without Borders in Gaza has reported a “sharp and unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition.” Adults frequently collapse from hunger, the aid agencies said, adding that stockpiles of food and other aid supplies warehoused outside the territory were being prevented from reaching people in need.

Israel blocked deliveries of aid between March and May after it ended a ceasefire with Hamas.

Canada, Australia and Britain have increased pressure on Israel over the starvation and the killing of civilians in Gaza, with Australia’s prime minister on Friday saying the situation has “gone beyond the world’s worst fears.”

Israel blocked aid deliveries to Gaza between March and May after it ended a cease-fire with Hamas. Since then, a private Israeli-backed group has run a system in which people go to a few sites in the Israeli-controlled areas of Gaza to receive aid. But hundreds of Palestinians have been killed at these locations, where Israeli soldiers have used live ammunition to contain unrest and disperse crowds of desperate people.

Aid groups have said that mass starvation is spreading in Gaza, and that the insecurity and Israeli restrictions have made food deliveries impossible. Haunting images of hollow-eyed, skeletal children have emerged in recent days from Gaza, where doctors say people are dying from hunger.

“Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe. Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia said in a statement. He called on Israel to immediately allow the United Nations and aid organizations to carry out their work safely.

More than 100 humanitarian organizations, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, warned in a joint statement on Wednesday of “mass starvation” in Gaza.

Israel has come under widespread international condemnation for restricting aid to the two million Palestinian residents of the enclave. Israel and Egypt both control Gaza’s borders. Since May the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private Israeli-backed group, has managed a system to distribute aid with far fewer distribution points than the previous U.N.-operated system.

Witnesses and Gaza health officials have repeatedly accused Israeli forces of shooting into crowds of people as they approach the distribution hubs trying to get food over the past two months. Israel’s government says it set up the new system to prevent Hamas and armed gangs from stealing aid.

The United Nations said last week that since May, more than 670 people had been killed near the aid sites, many as a result of gunfire, in a series of near-daily bouts of violence. Israel has accused the United Nations of failing to distribute supplies that are already in Gaza.

Israel said on Friday that it would soon allow other countries to drop aid from the air into the Gaza Strip during a widening humanitarian crisis in which several children have died of malnutrition.

Jordan and the United Arab Emirates were expected to begin airdrops in the coming days, according to COGAT, the Israeli military agency that regulates humanitarian affairs in Gaza.

Experts criticized the drops as largely symbolic and warned that they were unlikely to provide enough aid to the roughly two million Palestinians in Gaza, who are in dire conditions after 21 months of war.

Nearly one in three people in the territory is coping with food insecurity, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program. The Gaza health authorities say that acute malnutrition is rising and that children have died.

For nearly two years, people in Gaza have faced death by airstrikes, tanks and bullets.

Now, many are facing a slower, quieter end: They are dying from starvation.

It’s a crisis that Gaza’s few remaining functional hospitals can’t treat. “There is no one in Gaza now outside the scope of famine, not even myself,” Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, who leads the pediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, told my colleagues. “I am speaking to you as a health official, but I, too, am searching for flour to feed my family.”

As Gaza faces a looming famine, its social order is breaking down. Looting is rampant. Chaos surrounds the enclave’s few aid delivery sites. Israeli troops have opened fire on civilians waiting for food, again and again. The United Nations says that more than 1,000 people trying to get food have been killed since May.

After 21 months of devastating war in Gaza, it can be difficult to discern when conditions there have meaningfully shifted. But Times correspondents are clear: Gaza is descending into anarchy. It’s a crisis that appears unlikely to abate soon, as Israel and the U.S. said yesterday that they would withdraw from cease-fire talks with Hamas. Below, we explain what is happening.