Najah, a 19-year-old widow sheltering in a hospital in Gaza, said she fears she would “get shot” if she travelled to aid distribution site.
“I hope they bring us something to eat and drink. We die of hunger with nothing to eat or drink. We live in tents. We are finished off,” Najah told the BBC.
A doctor working in Gaza with a UK medical charity, Dr Aseel, said Gaza was not close to famine, but already “living it”.
“My husband went once [to an aid distribution point] and twice and then got shot and that was it,” she said.
“If we are to die from hunger, let it be. The path to aid is the path to death.”
Abu Alaa, a market seller in Gaza, said he and his children “go to bed hungry every night”.
“We are not alive. We are dead. We are pleading with the whole world to intervene and save us,” he added.
Walaa Fathi, who is eight months pregnant with her third child, said Gazans are “experiencing a catastrophe and a famine that no one could have imagined”.
“I hope that my baby stays in my womb and I don’t have to give birth in these difficult circumstances,” she told the BBC from Deir al-Balah.