UNITED NATIONS, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Hostilities in Gaza trigger aid access restrictions and drive up child malnourishment rates, said the world body on Friday.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said the 5,100-plus children between 6 months and 5 years of age admitted for acute malnutrition treatment in May represented a nearly 50 percent increase compared to April, and a 150 percent hike compared to February when a ceasefire was in effect and aid was entering the strip in significant quantities.

UNICEF said that in the first five months of this year, more than 16,700 children, or an average of 112 each day, were admitted for malnutrition treatment in Gaza. Each one of these cases is preventable. The food, water and nutrition treatments these children desperately need are being blocked from reaching them.

The fund called on Israel to urgently allow the large-scale delivery of life-saving aid through all border crossings. The agency said it has been distributing what little nutrition supplies it has and can bring into Gaza. Outside Gaza's borders, the equivalent of 1,000 truckloads of health, nutrition and other supplies were waiting to be delivered.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that out of the 21 requests to coordinate humanitarian movements inside Gaza, 12 were approved and facilitated by the Israeli authorities, including for the dispatch of fuel to the north, the retrieval of solid waste and the distribution of medical supplies.

Five other attempts, including for water trucking and road repair, were denied. Organizers canceled the remaining four.

OCHA said while no fuel has been allowed into Gaza for 16 weeks, the United Nations was able to retrieve fuel from the Al Tahreer station in Rafah on Wednesday. A limited amount of that fuel was delivered on Thursday to public utilities in southern Gaza, enabling desalination plants, water trucking services and sewage pumping stations to continue operations.

Humanitarian partners reported that the delivery brought vital relief, although fuel instability and shortages limit operations, resulting in reduced hours and capacity.

OCHA said the major telecommunications outage in central and southern Gaza due to a war-damaged fiber-optic cable continued. However, one of the Palestinian service providers reported that it has begun to restore internet and landline services in some parts of southern Gaza. Despite major security risks and difficult conditions on the ground, the team is working to restore service in the central and southern areas of the strip.

The office said its partners provided more than 1,400 children and child protection caregivers critical services, including structured psychosocial support, case management and individual consultations across 10 locations in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. Additionally, explosive ordnance risk education activities reached 850 children.

The humanitarians said that displacement orders, combined with hostilities, forced civilians into increasingly overcrowded areas already hosting large numbers of displaced families, where essential services are stretched beyond capacity.

OCHA underscored that civilians must be protected, including those fleeing and forced to leave through displacement orders and those who remain despite those orders.

In the West Bank, OCHA warned that more than 1,200 Palestinians in 13 herding communities in the Masafer Yatta area of southern Hebron are at greater risk of forced displacement following a new Israeli move to reject any pending and new planning and zoning requests in the area, including applications for building permits.

"This area was designated by the Israeli military as a firing zone in the 1980s, and its residents have over the years been subjected to a range of policies and practices by the Israeli authorities and Israeli settlers that have undermined their living conditions and generated repeated waves of displacement," OCHA said, adding it could speed up the demolition of all structures in those communities that support Palestinian lives and livelihoods.

OCHA calls for stepped-up protection for these communities, which have remained in the area for decades. ■