The United States "will continue" to drop humanitarian aid on Gaza, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said Tuesday, as Hamas calls for an end to these operations following drownings and deadly stampedes.
“Aid airdrops are one of the many ways we are using to deliver the aid that Palestinians in Gaza so desperately need and we will continue to do so” while “working tirelessly to increase the arrival of humanitarian assistance by land,” said this American spokesperson.
Eighteen deaths linked to parachute drops
A new sign of a desperate humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, where most of the 2.4 million inhabitants are threatened with famine according to the UN, the Hamas Ministry of Health announced on Tuesday the death of 18 people, including twelve drowned at sea “in the last few hours” while trying to recover food parachuted into the Gaza Strip devastated by the war.
In addition to the drowned people, six died in stampedes also linked to the arrival of aid by parachute.
Shortly after the announcement of this assessment, Hamas called for an end to airdrops and to open land access to humanitarian aid, strictly controlled by Israel.
It is this situation that pushed foreign governments, including the United Kingdom, France and the United States, to opt for airdropping food parcels into Gaza.
In a press release, he said he had “always warned countries conducting airdrop operations of the danger”, in particular “because part of this aid falls into the sea”.
Also read “We have nothing, we are waiting for death”: in Gaza, in the middle of Ramadan, humanitarian workers themselves are in the grip of hunger
In the sixth month of the conflict triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, the Hamas Ministry of Health reported more than 80 deaths in Israeli airstrikes in the last 24 hours in the Palestinian territory. besieged and devastated.
Despite Monday's vote on a UN Security Council resolution calling for an "immediate" ceasefire, with 14 votes in favor and one abstention, the war still rages in the narrow strip of land controlled by Hamas since 2007.