JERUSALEM — Israel will allow foreign nations to parachute humanitarian aid to a population in the Gaza Strip desperate for food, officials said Friday, during a widening crisis in which children have died of malnutrition.

Jordan and the United Arab Emirates were expected to begin airdrops in the coming days, according to COGAT, the Israeli military agency that regulates humanitarian affairs in Gaza.

Late Friday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a video posted on social platform X that his country was “working urgently” with Jordanian authorities to “get British aid onto planes and into Gaza.” He also said Britain was “accelerating efforts to evacuate children from Gaza who need critical medical assistance, bringing them to the U.K. for specialist medical treatment.”

The Israeli announcement followed rising international condemnation of the dire state of affairs in Gaza, with many countries — including some of Israel’s traditional allies — holding the Israeli government responsible for the situation. Israel said it is doing everything it can to allow aid into the Palestinian enclave.

“The humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in Gaza must end now,” the governments of Britain, France and Germany said in a joint statement Friday.

The severity of the humanitarian crisis over 21 months of grinding war has led some Western nations once sympathetic to Israel’s actions in Gaza to shift their stance toward the entrenched conflict. Thursday, France said it would soon recognize an independent state of Palestine, adding its name to a growing list of European countries to do so.

Starmer said in his address Friday that he was “unequivocal” in his support of recognizing a Palestinian state but that it would need to be part of a “wider plan, which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.”

Nearly 1 in 3 people in the territory is not eating for days at a time, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program. Gaza health authorities say that acute malnutrition is rising and that children have died.

Ordinary Palestinians in Gaza recount that basic goods like flour are sold for sky-high prices — or are not available at all. Doctors and health workers say their colleagues are struggling to keep working as they, too, go hungry. Major news agencies, including The Associated Press, said their employees in Gaza were less able to feed themselves.

Friday, the United Nations accused Israel of throwing up “bureaucratic, logistical, administrative and other operational obstacles” to the distribution of aid. Those restrictions compound other problems with getting food to hungry people, the U.N.’s office of humanitarian affairs said in a statement, including attacks on convoys by armed criminals inside Gaza.

“Why use airdrops when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders?” said Juliette Touma, the chief spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. “It’s much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper.”

Israeli officials say they have not limited the number of trucks entering the territory and they say the U.N. has failed to distribute hundreds of truckloads’ worth of food and other provisions from border crossings deeper into the Gaza Strip.

Ceasefire talks to end the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian armed group, have stalled. Many Gaza residents had hoped a truce would allow large amounts of food to flow freely into the enclave.

But Thursday, the Israeli government and the United States announced that they were recalling negotiators from Qatar, where they had held talks with Hamas.

Over the course of Israel’s nearly two-year war with Hamas, Israeli authorities have permitted some aid drops, including by the United States. But U.N. officials have consistently argued that the best way to bring enough food into Gaza is by land, through borders controlled by Israel and Egypt.

Israel permitted hundreds of trucks with aid to enter each day for several weeks during a ceasefire that lasted from January to March. But as further truce talks between Israel and Hamas sputtered to a halt, Israel barred practically all aid from entering the Gaza Strip for more than two months, including food, fuel and medicine.

At least one recent attempt by the U.N. to bring food into Gaza led to chaotic scenes as Israeli soldiers shot at crowds of Palestinians rushing to seize bags of flour. Gaza health officials reported that dozens of people were killed and wounded.

Sunday, a 25-truck convoy operated by the World Food Program made its way into the Gaza Strip. Shortly after passing the final checkpoint into Gaza, the trucks encountered huge crowds of hungry Palestinians.

“As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire,” the World Food Program said in a statement. “These people were simply trying to access food to feed themselves and their families on the brink of starvation.”

The Israeli military said its forces had fired “warning shots” after thousands of Palestinians rushed the area. The military disputed the death toll provided by Gaza officials but did not provide an alternate figure.