"Two million people are starving" in the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Monday, adding that 160,000 metric tonnes of food "is blocked at the border just minutes away".

"The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid, including food, in the ongoing blockade," he added, Middle East Eye reported.

Speaking at the opening of the annual World Health Assembly, Tedros said that increasing hostilities, evacuation orders, shrinking humanitarian space and the Gaza aid blockade were "driving an influx of casualties to a health system that is already on its knees".

"People are dying from preventable diseases as medicines wait at the border, while attacks on hospitals deny people care, and deter them from seeking it," he said.

Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said Monday that it was in talks with Israeli authorities on the resumption of aid to Gaza, after Israel announced it would allow a limited amount of food into the besieged territory.

"We have been approached by Israeli authorities to resume limited aid delivery, and we are in discussions with them now on how this would take place given the conditions on the ground," OCHA said in a statement.