A parachute landing a humanitarian airdrop fails to open and a pallet crashes into a crowd waiting for food north of Gaza City's Shati refugee camp, killing five people and injuring several others.
Gaza's government media office confirmed casualties after Friday's incident, condemned the “useless” airdrop as “flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service” and allowed food to be brought in by land. asked to do so.
“We previously warned of the threat to the lives of residents in the Gaza Strip, and this happened today when a package fell on residents' heads,” it said in a statement.
Reporting from Rafah, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud said people in northern Gaza were experiencing a “tragedy”.
“Not only are they facing food and medicine shortages, but while waiting for food packages they are either targeted by Israeli forces or killed by parachutes that don't work,” Mahmoud said. Ta.
The death toll comes as famine creeps into the enclave, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reporting last month that at least 500,000 people in the Gaza Strip, or one in four people, faced starvation. .
The report highlighted the challenges of delivering desperately needed humanitarian relief to the Gaza Strip amid Israeli restrictions.
UNRWA, the largest UN agency in Gaza, announced that Israeli authorities have not allowed supplies to enter the northern Gaza Strip since January 23.
The World Food Program, which had suspended deliveries in the Gaza Strip citing security concerns, said on Tuesday that the military had forced its convoy back north for the first time in two weeks.
In response, a number of countries, including the United States, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, have carried out airdrops, which aid agencies say are expensive and ineffective methods of delivering food and medicine. has been criticized.
On Wednesday, WFP said the controversial method should be considered as a “last resort”. In contrast, the paper said that week's airdrops delivered only 6 tons of food, while the failed 14-truck convoy would have delivered 200 tons of food to people. Ta.
#airdrop It is only a last resort to reach northern Gaza.Road routes are the only way to transport the large quantities of food desperately needed to avoid #famine.
For comparison:
🪂 This week's airdrop = 6 tons of food
🚛14 truck fleets that failed this week = 200 tons of food pic.twitter.com/xkR3ZfDgmt— WFP in the Middle East and North Africa (@WFP_MENA) March 6, 2024
On Friday, UNRWA communications director Juliet Touma told Al Jazeera: “There are easier and cheaper ways to get essential supplies to the Gaza Strip…and that involves sending more trucks from Israel to the Strip. It's via road.''
“If there is political will, there is a way,” she said, adding that so far desperately needed supplies have not been cleared away fast enough and that “more needs to be put into the Strip.” Yes,” he added.
Friday's disaster came just one day after U.S. President Joe Biden announced a complex workaround to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver aid, a move that is a sign of the looming famine and Israeli It has been criticized as an attempt to divert attention from the country's consistent blocking of aid to the enclave.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Britain would take part in the project, but said: “It will take time to build.”
While welcoming the development, he urged Israel to open its own Ashdod port in the meantime.
“We need to make a change now,” he said.
Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der said a maritime corridor delivering aid from Cyprus to the besieged enclave could be completed as early as this weekend, thanks to the cooperation of a number of partners including European countries, the United States and the UAE. There is also a possibility that it will be established. Lien.