The United Nations human rights office says more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since May while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip.

Tens of Palestinians in Gaza City queued up in long lines around a soup kitchen with their pots, hoping to fill them up with whatever little they could get from the watery tomato soap that has little eggplant pieces in it.

The aid agency says its buildings in the central part of the territory were attacked after the military targeted Deir al-Balah, which had largely been spared.

Israeli ground troops for the first time have pushed into areas of a central Gaza city where several aid groups are based.

Israel Defense Forces pushed into a central Gaza city on Monday for the first time since the war with Hamas began.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Jerusalem's Latin Patriarch, said on Tuesday he and church leaders had returned from a visit to Gaza with "broken hearts", calling the spiralling humanitarian crisis there "morally unacceptable".

The U.N. human rights office says more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since May while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli troops for the first time Monday pushed into areas of a central Gaza city where several aid groups are based, in what appeared to be the latest effort to carve up the Palestinian territory with military corridors.