A Luftwaffe C-130 Hercules transport plane, in cooperation with French airmen, dropped four tons of food north of Gaza, which were parachuted, the German Air Force revealed this Saturday on X .
“Just 72 hours after Defense Minister Boris Pistorius gave us the green light, our
#C130 plane
dropped 4 tonnes of emergency food over northern Gaza.
We delivered the 4 pallets precisely at a height of around 1000 meters
,” the Luftwaffe said on its official account, publishing several images of the parachute drop.
“
We have barely landed and we are already loading the plane with our French comrades for the next flight.
We will deliver the groceries tomorrow
,” the German airmen clarified.
“First parachute drop by the Franco-German squadron, with a Luftwaffe crew and French broads. “Success of very high-level cooperation
,” welcomed the French general staff.
At the beginning of January and the end of February, previous drops of humanitarian aid had already been carried out by C-130s, this time by the French and Jordanian air forces.
Morocco also announced that it would deploy six Hercules aircraft to support these airdrops.
This new air operation comes as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, visiting the Middle East, called on Israel to support the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
“It is necessary that aid now reaches Gaza on a larger scale
,” urged the head of the German executive.
However, airdrops, which cannot be large due to the inherent limitations of the aircraft, do not allow a change of scale and are considered very insufficient by the NGOs present in the Gaza Strip.
Sea bridge
Supported by the United States, a sea bridge with the island of Cyprus attempts to compensate for supplies to the Palestinian enclave by land, slowed down by controls by the Israeli army.
A first ship from the Spanish NGO Open Arms, with 200 tonnes of food on board, docked in Gaza on Friday.
The end of the unloading, which is equivalent to fifty times an airdrop operation by plane, took place this Saturday.
The humanitarian situation could further worsen since Israel plans, while negotiating a temporary ceasefire with Hamas, to launch a military operation, this time in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, where there are 2 refugees .4 million Palestinians.