Aid airdrop kills five people in Gaza after parachute fails
Al Jazeera
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 in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The government media office in Gaza confirmed the casualties after the incident occurred on Friday, lambasting the “useless” airdrops 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.
“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.
