[News] Aid airdrop kills five people in Gaza after parachute fails

[Anti-Imperialist News]

aljazeera.com
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/aid-airdrop-kills-five-gaza-israel-war-hunger-famine>
Aid airdrop kills five people in Gaza after parachute fails
Al Jazeera
March 8, 2024
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*As famine stalks enclave, aid workarounds criticised as a distraction from
Israel’s blocking of aid through land routes.*

Five people were killed and several injured after a parachute landing a
humanitarian airdrop failed to open, bringing a pallet crashing down into a
crowd of people waiting for food north of Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp.

The government media office in Gaza confirmed the casualties after the
incident occurred on Friday, lambasting the “useless” airdrops
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/2/us-airdrops-food-to-gaza-in-move-criticised-by-aid-organisations>
as “flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service” and calling for
food to be allowed through land crossings.

“We previously warned it poses a threat to the lives of citizens in the
Gaza Strip and this is what happened today when the parcels fell on the
citizens’ heads,” it said in a statement.

Reporting from Rafah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that people are
experiencing “a tragedy” in the north of Gaza
<https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/gaza/>.

“Not only are they confronted with the lack of food and medical supplies,
but as they wait for packages of food, they are either targeted by the
Israeli military or killed by a non-functional parachute,” Mahmoud said.

The deaths occurred as famine
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/26/no-aid-delivery-in-northern-gaza-since-more-than-a-month-unrwa>
stalked the enclave, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs reporting last month that at least half a million, or
one in four people in Gaza, face famine.

It highlighted the problem of getting desperately needed humanitarian
relief into Gaza amid Israeli restrictions.

UNRWA, the largest UN agency in Gaza, says Israeli authorities have not
allowed it to deliver supplies to the north of the strip since January 23.
[image: Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity
kitchen amid shortages of food supplies, as the ongoing conflict between
Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Rafah]Palestinian
children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Rafah [File:
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

The World Food Programme, which had paused deliveries in Gaza because of
security concerns, said the military forced its first convoy to the north
in two weeks to turn back on Tuesday.

In response, a number of countries – including the United States, Jordan,
the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – have conducted airdrops, which have
been criticised by aid agencies as a costly and ineffective way of
delivering food and medical supplies.

The latest news from around the world. Timely. Accurate. Fair.

On Wednesday, the WFP said that the controversial method should be
considered “a last resort”. By way of contrast, it said that the week’s
airdrops had only delivered six tonnes of food, while a failed 14-truck
convoy would have brought 200 tonnes of food to people.

On Friday, Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s communications director told Al Jazeera,
“There is an easier and cheaper way to bring in much-needed supplies into
the Gaza Strip … That is via the road including sending more trucks from
Israel into the Gaza Strip.

“When there is a political will there is a way,” she said, adding that, so
far, desperately needed supplies have not been cleared fast enough and
“there needs to be much more” going into the strip.

Friday’s disaster struck only a day after US President Joe Biden announced
a complicated workaround to build a temporary pier off Gaza’s coast
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/us-port-plan-to-step-up-aid-delivery-to-gaza-criticised-as-distraction>
to
deliver aid, a move criticised as an attempt to divert attention from the
looming famine and Israel’s consistent blocking of assistance to the
enclave.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that the United Kingdom would
be participating in the project, but said it would “take time to build”.

While welcoming the development, he nevertheless urged Israel to open its
own port of Ashdod in the meantime.

“We need to make a difference right now,” he said.

Meanwhile, a maritime corridor delivering aid from Cyprus to the besieged
enclave – a collaboration of a number of partners, including European
countries, the US, and the UAE – could be established as soon as this
weekend, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
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