Gaza authorities announced late Tuesday that a total of 12 people had drowned while attempting to retrieve airdropped supplies that had fallen into the Mediterranean Sea, calling airdrops a last resort to get urgently needed food and other supplies to the enclave. I asked them to cancel it. — and an increase in deliveries by land transport.
Ahmed Abu Kamal, a researcher at the Gaza-based human rights organization Euromed Rights, said he spoke with witnesses and said people were heading into the sea from a beach in northern Gaza to receive aid on Monday afternoon. Has entered. He also said about 12 people drowned and at least one was entangled in a parachute.
The details could not be independently confirmed and it was not clear which country was responsible for the airdrop in question.
Three of the approximately 80 aid supplies the U.S. dropped on Monday were “reported to have landed in the water due to parachute failure,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said at a news conference Tuesday. However, she said she could not confirm the reports of drowning.
Singh said the relief supplies were intentionally dropped over water and were meant to be carried to land by wind currents to reduce potential damage if the parachutes did not deploy.
This was not the first death related to a relief drop. Earlier this month, Gazan authorities said at least five Palestinians were killed and several others injured when airdropped aid fell in Gaza City. On Tuesday, the Gaza government media office announced that six other people were killed in mob violence as they tried to get relief supplies that were airlifted to other locations.
The United Nations and other aid groups say trucks, rather than planes, are the cheapest, safest and most effective way to deliver aid to Gaza. More than 2 million people in the Gaza Strip are facing a famine crisis, and humanitarian groups say they are on the brink of starvation. .
But several governments, including the United States, France, Jordan and Egypt, have in recent weeks used airdrops to supplement aid arriving by land, while urging Israel to accept more trucks.
Britain airdropped aid into Gaza for the first time on Monday, delivering more than 10 tonnes of supplies along the northern coastline as part of a Jordan-led mission, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
Governments say the cuts are necessary because the amount of aid flowing into Gaza has fallen sharply since October 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel. Since then, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has fallen by about 75 percent, according to U.N. data. One charity, World Central Kitchen, delivered a large amount of aid to Gaza earlier this month.
Governments and aid groups say Israel is slowing aid deliveries through strict inspections of trucks. Israeli officials have criticized UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency that helps Palestinians, arguing that Israel can inspect and process aid trucks faster than humanitarian groups can distribute aid within the territory.
Abu Bakr Bashir , Adam Serra and Anushka Patil report.