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Humanitarian aid supplies are being dropped by the US through Gaza City.
© Mohammed Hajjar/AP/dpa
The situation for the civilian population in Gaza is catastrophic.
Everything is missing.
The USA is now also launching aid deliveries from the air.
Washington - In view of the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, the USA has begun delivering aid supplies to the civilian population there from the air.
The responsible regional command of the US military, Centcom, announced that US military C-130 transport aircraft had dropped a total of around 38,000 meals over the crisis area.
It was a joint operation with the Jordanian Air Force.
Plans were being made for further operations of this kind.
Netanyahu is pressing ahead with the offensive
The humanitarian situation of the people in Gaza has been deteriorating dramatically for weeks.
The bare necessities are missing.
Representatives of the United Nations recently warned in the Security Council of the starvation of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing ahead with the ground offensive in Gaza despite ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire and is restricting humanitarian aid.
66 packages from the air
In view of the emergency, US President Joe Biden had announced the day before that the US also wanted to provide people in the densely populated coastal area with relief supplies from the air.
Jordan and Egypt are already doing this.
The flights are coordinated with Israel.
According to the US government, a total of 66 large packages of ready-to-eat meals were dropped over Gaza from three transport planes on Saturday afternoon local time.
According to eyewitnesses, locals raised their hands to the planes, which flew so low that locals could tell they were US planes.
According to eyewitnesses, relief supplies were dropped over the city of Gaza in the north of the coastal strip and over Rafah in the south.
Two U.S. Air Force C-130J Super Hercules aircraft dropping humanitarian aid packages.
© Tech.
Sgt. Christopher Hubenthal/United States Airforces Central via DVIDS/dpa
Senior US government officials said the operation was successful.
The drop points were observed and civilians were seen approaching and distributing relief supplies among themselves.
The success of the campaign was an important test run for similar operations “in the coming days and weeks”.
The preparations for this were already underway.
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Problems on the ground
The food or medicine dropped brings some relief from the need, especially in areas that are difficult or impossible to reach by land with aid deliveries, such as the northern Gaza Strip.
However, UN organizations point out that the quantities that can be delivered through airdrops are rather small.
There is hunger in the Gaza Strip.
Now the Americans are reacting.
© Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa
Given the large number of people in need in Gaza, the effect is quickly dissipated, they say.
In addition, all order has collapsed in the affected areas as a result of the war.
Young men often fight over the dropped packages in order to get something for their families.
According to UN officials, it would be easier if Israel would simply allow aid deliveries to be delivered by truck via border crossings in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The US government is now also considering deliveries by sea.
U.S. officials said work is still ongoing.
However, they emphasized that neither air nor sea aid is an alternative to the need to transport aid via as many land crossings as possible.
“This is the most efficient way to deliver assistance on a large scale,” one of the U.S. officials said.
He emphasized that, in general, a core problem was distribution: criminal gangs plundered aid supplies and resold them.
The only antidote is to bring as much aid as possible to the Gaza Strip by all possible means.
This reduces the incentives for gangs to attack aid deliveries.
On Thursday, when a convoy arrived in the Gaza Strip, many desperate people tried to get relief supplies.
The onslaught resulted in riots and shooting by Israeli soldiers.
According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, more than a hundred people were killed and more than 700 injured.
The circumstances are still largely unclear.
While the Palestinian side said that Israeli soldiers had deliberately fired into the crowd, the Israeli military blamed the chaos and crowds for the deaths.
Shots were fired, but only a few people were injured.
Numerous countries, including the USA and Germany, demanded clarification from Israel.
dpa