In response to the tragic events that unfolded in Gaza, the United States has undertaken its inaugural humanitarian aid airdrop, delivering over 30,000 meals via three military planes.
This collaborative operation involved joint efforts with Jordan’s air force and marks the commencement of a series of aid initiatives, as pledged by President Joe Biden.
The decision to escalate humanitarian assistance came swiftly after a devastating incident resulted in the loss of at least 112 lives when a crowd surged towards a convoy on Thursday.
President Biden, in a commitment to address the immediate needs of the affected population, announced the initiation of aid deliveries via airdrop.
The airdrop comes as a top US official said the framework of a deal for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza was in place.
On Saturday C-130 transport planes dropped more than 38,000 meals along the coastline of the territory, US Central Command said in a statement.
“These airdrops are part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes,” it added.
Other countries including the UK, France, Egypt and Jordan have previously airdropped aid into Gaza, but this is the first by the US.
Administration officials said that Thursday’s tragic incident had highlighted “the importance of expanding and sustaining the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza in response to the dire humanitarian situation”.
Aid agencies have said that airdrops are an inefficient way of delivering aid.
Displaced Gaza resident Medhat Taher said that such a method was woefully inadequate.
“Will this be enough for a school? Is this enough for 10,000 people?
“It’s better to send aid via crossings and better than airdropping via parachutes.”
In his statement on Friday, President Biden said the US would “insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need”.
Meanwhile a Biden administration official said on Saturday that Israel had “more or less accepted” a deal on a new ceasefire.
“It will be a six-week ceasefire in Gaza starting today if Hamas agrees to release the defined category of vulnerable hostages; the sick, the wounded, elderly and women,” the unnamed official said.
It has also been reported that the US Vice-President, Kamala Harris will meet Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz in Washington on Monday to discuss a truce and other issues, Reuters quotes a White House official as saying.
In Thursday’s incident, 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured as they crowded around aid lorries on the south-western edge of Gaza City.
Hamas accused Israel of firing at civilians, but Israel said most died in a crush after it fired warning shots.
Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that he and a team sent to al-Shifa hospital had found a large number of people with bullet wounds.
Meanwhile, Hamas said an Israeli bombardment had killed at least 11 people at a camp in Rafah in southern Gaza on Saturday.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the attack “outrageous”.
The Israeli army said it had carried out a “precision strike” against Islamic Jihad militants in the area.
The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that a famine is imminent in northern Gaza, which has received very little aid in recent weeks, and where an estimated 300,000 people are living with little food or clean water.
The Israel military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign to destroy Hamas after its gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October and took 253 back to Gaza as hostages.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 30,000 people, including 21,000 children and women, have been killed in Gaza since then with some 7,000 missing and at least 70,450 injured.
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