The United Nations stopped distributing aid to the Gaza Strip on Thursday after running out of fuel as the Israeli terminal that supplies the besieged Palestinian territory remained shut.

"We have just stopped the distribution of all food aid to 650,000 Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip because of the lack of fuel in our storage in Gaza," said Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) office in Gaza.
"We also stopped transporting students and officials in the Gaza Strip," he told AFP. "Not a litre of fuel came from Israel," he added.
Israel, which maintains a punishing blockade on the impoverished territory, accused the Islamist Hamas movement of preventing distribution of one million litres of fuel (260,000 gallons) delivered about a week ago.
But UNRWA retorted that the stored fuel was not destined for UN agencies in Gaza, which buy their own supplies.
Israel suggested that the United Nations complain to Hamas, which controls Gaza.
"They should take it up with Hamas and demand they get fuel from the million litres stored on the Palestinian side of the border," foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said.
"We did try today to transfer fuel directly to UNRWA but a farmers' demonstration supported by Hamas prevented us from doing so," he told AFP.
John Ging, who heads the UNRWA offices in Gaza, said Israel had promised to supply 100,000 litres of diesel and 20,000 litres of petrol to the United Nations.
"It is unacceptable that the UN should find itself having to consider suspending its humanitarian operations simply for a lack of fuel for its vehicles," EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said in a statement.
Israel stopped supplying petrol and diesel, and cut fuel supplies for Gaza's power plant by half after Palestinian militants attacked Nahal Oz two weeks ago, killing two Israeli civilian employees.
It resumed shipments of fuel for the power plant several days later, but again halted deliveries after another attack killed three Israeli soldiers near the crossing.
Israel has sealed the Gaza Strip off to all but very limited humanitarian aid since Hamas seized control of the territory from forces loyal to moderate president Mahmud Abbas last June.
A Hamas delegation announced after talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo that the Islamist movement was ready to accept a phased truce that would only extend to the occupied West Bank in a second stage in return for an end to Israel's blockade.
Senior Hamas official Mahmud al-Zahar, a former Palestinian foreign minister, said the group was ready to accept the truce extending to West Bank after a six-month delay, Egypt's official MENA news agency reported.
In the past Israel has rejected a truce covering all of the Palestinian territories, saying that its operations in the occupied West Bank are essential to prevent militants from launching attacks inside the Jewish state.
On Wednesday, Robert Serry, the UN special envoy for the Middle East peace process, urged militants to stop attacking border crossings and called on Israel to lift its blockade.
Humanitarian agencies say Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated territories with 1.5 million people living on a narrow sliver of land, is on the brink of disaster.
Israel says its sanctions are necessary to pressure Hamas to end persistent rocket attacks.
The situation was highlighted on Wednesday at a UN Security Council session in New York that saw Western ambassadors walk out in protest after the Libyan delegate compared conditions in Gaza to those in Nazi death camps.
Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's deputy UN ambassador, said on Thursday the situation in Gaza is actually "worse" than in the Nazi camps.
"It is more than what happened in the concentration camps because there is the bombing, daily bombs in Gaza," Dabbashi told reporters. "It is worse."
Libya, the sole Arab member on the 15-member council, acts as a spokesman for the Arab group at the United Nations.
Israel's ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman reacted furiously to Dabbashi's comments, saying that it showed that Libya remained a "terrorist" state despite its rapprochement with the West of the past five years.
"Libya is a very pertinent example of what happens when you let terrorists infiltrate the Security Council," he said