Hamas pushes to halt aid airdrops into Gaza after two people are killed

On Tuesday, two people died when an aid parachute fell onto the roof of a warehouse where residents had gathered to collect relief supplies.

With the latest fatalities, at least 21 people died when airdrops of aid failed disastrously, according to Hamas authorities.

“We reiterate that airdrops pose a real threat to the lives of citizens and do not represent a real solution to alleviating the food crisis in northern Gaza,” Salama Marouf, head of the government’s media office in Gaza, said in a statement.

“We call for an immediate halt to aid deliveries in this ineffective and flawed manner and we call for the full activation of land crossings to deliver humanitarian aid to the north of the Gaza Strip.”

With only a trickle of aid reaching the starving north and the United Nations warning of “impending famine,” foreign governments have resorted to airdrops to bring aid to the area.

Aid groups say the situation worsened this week after Israeli forces closed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt after taking control of it.

No aid was delivered to Gaza via the other main crossing between Israel and the Palestinian territory, Kerem Shalom, after it came under rocket fire three times since Sunday.

Meanwhile, a US container ship loaded with aid for Gaza left Cyprus on Thursday to test a new maritime corridor to bring aid to the besieged area.

The US-flagged ship Sagamore left the port of Larnaca after being loaded with aid from Britain, Cyprus and the United States, Cyprus government spokesman Yiannis Antoniou told the official CNA news agency.

US military engineers have built a makeshift pier on the Gaza Strip coast to unload aid supplies at sea.

UN agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned that sea deliveries and air drops cannot deliver the aid needed to avert acute food shortages for the 2.4 million people in the Gaza Strip.

Gaza has been devastated by the war, which began with Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7 and resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

At least 34,904 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled region.

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