Announcing an extra £40m of humanitarian assistance for Gaza this year, Lammy said he was “a steadfast supporter of Israel’s security and its right to exist” but the government’s actions were “doing untold damage to Israel’s standing in the world and undermining Israel’s long-term security”.

There have been almost daily reports of Palestinians being killed while waiting for food since May, when Israel partially eased an 11-week total blockade on aid deliveries to Gaza and, along with the US, helped to establish a new aid system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to bypass the existing one overseen by the UN.

Israel has said the GHF’s system, which uses US private security contractors to hand out food parcels from sites inside Israeli military zones, prevents supplies being stolen by Hamas.

But the UN and its partners have refused to co-operate with the system, saying it is unsafe and violates the humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence.

Last Tuesday, the UN human rights office said it had recorded 674 killings in the vicinity of the GHF’s aid sites since they began operating eight weeks ago. Another 201 killings had been recorded along routes of UN and other aid convoys, it added.

On Saturday, another 39 people were killed near two GHF sites in Khan Younis and nearby Rafah, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The Israeli military said its troops fired warning shots to prevent “suspects” approaching them before the sites opened.

And on Sunday, the ministry said 67 people were killed as they surged toward a convoy of UN aid lorries near a crossing point in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said troops fired warning shots at a crowd “to remove an immediate threat” but disputed the numbers killed.

Following the incident, the World Food Programme warned that Gaza’s hunger crisis had “reached new levels of desperation”.

“People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance. Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment,” the UN agency said.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Monday that 19 people had died as a result of malnutrition since Saturday and warned of potential “mass deaths” in the coming days.

“Hospitals can no longer provide food for patients or staff, many of whom are physically unable to continue working due to extreme hunger,” Dr Khalil al-Daqran, a spokesperson for al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, told the BBC.

“Hospitals cannot provide a single bottle of milk to children suffering from hunger, because all baby formula has run out from the market,” he added.

Residents also reported that markets were closed due to food shortages.

“My children cry from hunger all night. They’ve had only a small plate of lentils over the past three days. There’s no bread. A kilogramme of flour was $80 (£59) a week ago,” Mohammad Emad al-Din, a barber and father of two, told the BBC.