The United States military, in coordination with Jordan, Egypt and France, airdropped more than 36,000 meals into northern Gaza on Tuesday — the second such delivery of aid since Saturday, when the US dropped some 38,000 meals in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, US President Joe Biden said: “The United States is committed to pulling out every stop to get more aid to those in Gaza who desperately need it. We won’t stand by. We won’t let up.”
Airdrops by the US and other countries are aimed at supplementing what officials say is an insufficient supply of aid being brought in by ground to Gaza, where the United Nations and associated aid agencies have warned that famine is “almost inevitable.”
“US Central Command and the Royal Jordanian Air Force conducted a combined humanitarian assistance airdrop into Northern Gaza on March 5, 2024, at 2:30 p.m. (Gaza time) to provide essential relief to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict,” the military command said in a statement Tuesday.
“US C-130s dropped over 36,800 US and Jordanian meal equivalents in Northern Gaza, an area of great need, allowing for civilian access to the critical aid,” CENTCOM said, adding that “we continue planning for follow-on aid delivery missions.”
The US has been working to get aid into Gaza through as many channels as possible, the State Department said Monday, describing the situation as “simply intolerable.”
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a daily briefing with reporters that Washington was “optimistic” about the potential of a maritime aid corridor to Gaza that it has been working on and US military’s airdrops were also set to continue. “Our goal is clear, to establish a comprehensive aid strategy that includes air, land and sea routes to maximize the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and ensure that aid is distributed to everyone in Gaza who needs it,” Miller said.
Israel has also said it is prepared to let in more aid to Gaza through the two checkpoints on the southern edge of the territory it has permitted to open, and has pointed the finger at the UN and other aid agencies for failing to distribute it more widely.
Israel, which checks all trucks entering Gaza from both crossings, has blamed the UN for not delivering the aid fast enough after they are cleared, and for leading to a general fall-off in deliveries over the past month.
The UN has said it is becoming more difficult to distribute aid inside the enclave amid a breakdown of civil administration and law and order. The flow of aid from Egypt has almost dried up in the past two weeks, and a collapse in security has made it increasingly difficult to distribute the food that does get through, according to UN data and officials.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza drew renewed international attention last week after dozens of Palestinians who had surged to pull goods off an aid convoy were killed in chaotic scenes.
Hamas claims at least 115 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded on Thursday as they swarmed aid trucks that entered the city.
The terror group accused Israeli troops of shooting at the crowd of thousands, while the IDF says many of the casualties were trampled in a chaotic crush for the food aid, and that its troops only fired at a few individuals who rushed toward them in a threatening manner.
The IDF has promised a thorough investigation of the incident.
The delivery of aid to Gaza has been a point of contention in the devastating five-month war, triggered by the unprecedented shock Hamas attack on October 7, when thousands of terrorists rampaged through southern Israeli communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages.
The US has consistently pressured Israel to increase the delivery of aid since the war started, following the October 7 massacre.
Before the war with Hamas, Gaza relied on 500 trucks with supplies entering daily.
An Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday that Israel has begun testing bringing in aid through the border between Israel and northern Gaza. Until now, all aid has been checked at Kerem Shalom, at Gaza’s southern end, then sent in through the crossing there or through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing.
Getting trucks safely into the northern Gaza Strip is a priority for Israel, the official explained, and though the number of trucks entering the Strip from the south reached new highs this week, almost all have been cleaned out before they make it to the north.
The UN has said a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people face starvation. Aid officials have said that airdrops are not an efficient means of distributing aid and are a measure of last resort.