Wednesday, March 27, 2024 – The authorities in Gaza on Tuesday evening, March 26, called for an end to aid being airdropped and encouraged an increase in deliveries by land.
The authorities disclosed that a total of 12 people drowned
while trying to retrieve airdropped aid that had fallen into the Mediterranean.
People waded into the water from a beach in northern Gaza on
Monday afternoon, March 25, to get the aid packages, according to Ahmed Abu
Qamar, a Gaza-based researcher for EuroMed Rights, a human rights group, who
said he had spoken to witnesses.
He also said that around a dozen people had drowned, saying
that at least one had become entangled in a parachute.
It was not clear which country was responsible for the
airdrop in question.
Three of approximately 80 aid bundles dropped by the United
States on Monday “were reported to have had parachute malfunctions and landed
in the water,” a Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said at a news conference
on Tuesday.
However, she said that she could not confirm the reports of
the drownings.
The aid was intentionally dropped over water and intended to
be carried to land by wind drift, to mitigate potential harm in the event that
the parachutes failed to deploy, Ms. Singh said.
The fatalities were not the first connected to aid
drops. Earlier this month, the authorities in Gaza said that at least five
Palestinians had been killed and several others wounded when airdropped aid
packages fell on them in Gaza City.
On Tuesday, March 26, the Gaza government media office said
that six other people had died during what it characterized as stampeded trying
to get aid that was airdropped in other locations.
The United Nations and other aid organizations say that
trucks, rather than planes, are the cheapest, safest and most effective means
of delivering aid to Gaza, a territory whose population of more than two
million faces a hunger crisis that humanitarian organizations say borders on
famine.
But several governments, including those of the United
States, France, Jordan and Egypt, have in recent weeks used airdrops to
supplement aid that arrives by land, while also calling on Israel to allow in
more trucks.
Watch a video from the scene of the drowning below.
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