WASHINGTON: Airdropped aid packages from an unidentified country killed five children and injured several others in Gaza on Friday, Palestinian officials said.
Muhammad Al-Sheikh, head of the emergency care department at Al Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, told CNN the incident happened in the Al Shati camp west of Gaza City, according to United Press International (UPI).
Some of the people injured in the drop are in serious condition, Al-Sheikh said.
UPI reported Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told ABC News that no one was injured in a US airdrop conducted Friday in northern Gaza.
“Press reports that US air drops resulted in civilian casualties on the ground are false, as we’ve confirmed that all of our aid bundles landed safely on the ground,” Ryder said during a press briefing.
The Government Media Office in Gaza criticised air drops as “useless” and called for the immediate opening of land crossings into Gaza to more efficiently deliver aid to the approximately 2.4 million people suffering from water and food shortages.
It also quoted Adam Bouloukos, a senior official at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees-West Bank, (UNRWA) told ABC News that airdrops are dangerous and a drop in the bucket in terms of need.
“You see the airdrops which look very dramatic, like, oh, this is a solution. [They are] immensely expensive, completely inefficient [and] dangerous. You’re dropping these huge sacks of whatever it is on the beach with people running toward them,” he said.
The UN Relief and Works Agency has criticised Israel for not allowing enough authorisation to deliver aid into Gaza, and the fighting makes it difficult to deliver aid even when authorisation is given.
The World Food Program said Wednesday that Israeli authorities blocked a convoy of 14 trucks carrying food to Palestinians.
The convoy was the first effort from the WFP to deliver aid into northern Gaza after it suspended operations in February amid complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order.
Nearly 31,000 Palestinians had been killed and over 72,000 others wounded in Israel’s deadly military offensive on Gaza since Oct 7 last year.
The regime has also imposed blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation amid mass destruction and the shortages of necessities. – Bernama-UPI
