UNITED NATIONS, Mar. 6 (Reuters) - The United Nations will assess on Thursday how it can use an Israeli military road bordering the Gaza Strip to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of desperate civilians in the north of the Palestinian enclave, a senior U.N. aid official said.

The U.N. has warned that at least 576,000 people in Gaza – one-quarter of the population – are on the brink of famine.

Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. aid coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said the U.N. had been pushing Israel for weeks to use the Gaza border fence road and had received much more cooperation from Israel in the past week.

Palestinian officials say more than 100 people were killed last Thursday trying to reach an aid convoy near Gaza City, most of them shot by Israeli troops. Israel's military, which had been overseeing the private aid deliveries, said most of them died in a stampede.

"Since the incident last week, I think Israel saw quite clearly how difficult it is to deliver assistance," McGoldrick told reporters, adding that the U.N. had seen "much more cooperation from Israel as a result of that realization."

Aid can currently reach Gaza in the south via the Rafah crossing from Egypt and Kerem Shalom from Israel. McGoldrick said the plan was for aid convoys to be inspected at those crossings, then escorted through Israeli territory along a military road to the Israeli border village Beeri.

"Once we go inside Gaza, we will be then left to go on our own," he said, adding that the U.N. would do an assessment of the possible new route on Thursday to check the state of the roads within Gaza to ensure there is no unexploded ordnance and to identify suitable distribution points for the aid.

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