US Initiates Gaza Airlift Aid

US Initiates Gaza Airlift Aid:

This is the first time that the United States has dropped humanitarian aid from an airplane into Gaza.           More than 30,000 food items were parachuted into three military planes.

The United States jointly conducted this relief operation with the Jordanian Air Force. They will send more aid to Gaza, as President Joe Biden had previously announced.

When 112 people were killed while seeking relief on Thursday, he promised to speed up the relief work.

Hamas said another 760 people were injured in Israeli strikes that day. The airlift comes as a top US official says all preparations are underway for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza.

A Biden administration official said Saturday that Israel has “pretty much accepted” a new cease-fire offer.

“A 6-week cease-fire in Gaza will begin today if Hamas agrees to release certain prisoners of war… namely the sick, wounded, elderly and female prisoners,” the top US official said on condition of anonymity.

The US Central Command said in a statement that on Saturday, C-130 transport aircraft air-dropped more than 38,000 food items to the Gaza Strip.

It added, “These aids are a mechanism to bring more aid to Gaza, which will be supplemented by road and other means of aid.”

Other countries such as the UK, France, Egypt and Jordan have previously dropped aid from the air to Gaza, but this is the first time the US has done so.

“Thursday’s heartbreaking events highlight the need for more humanitarian aid to emerge from Gaza’s inhumane conditions,” administration officials said.

But aid agencies say airdrops like this are an ineffective way to deliver relief.

Medhat Taher, a displaced person from Gaza, told the Reuters news agency that this system of relief aid is far short of what is needed.

“Would it be enough for a school? Can 10,000 people walk in it? In this way, it is better to bring aid through the border instead of dropping relief through parachutes,” he said.

On Thursday, 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured when an aid convoy was mobbed in the southwestern part of Gaza City.

Al-Rashid Street, a coastal road to the southwest of Gaza that has recently been used as a relief distribution center, is where the tragic incident took place.

Meanwhile, Hamas says 11 people were killed in the Rafah camp in southern Gaza on Saturday as well. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the attack “heinous”. The Israeli army says it carried out a “well-planned and targeted attack” against Islamic Jihad fighters there.
The UN’s World Food Program has warned that a famine is becoming more and more imminent in northern Gaza, where little aid has recently flowed in and some 300,000 people have little access to food and clean water.

On October 7, Hamas gunmen entered southern Israel and killed 1,200 people and captured 253. The Israeli army launched an intense air and ground campaign against them.

Since then, more than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, including 21,000 women and children. Apart from this, about 7 thousand people are still missing and over 70 thousand are injured.