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The US will begin airdropping food aid into Gaza, US President Joe Biden said on Friday, amid an increasingly acute humanitarian crisis on the ground after months of Israeli attacks in the enclave.
The decision comes as the Biden administration grows increasingly concerned about the threat posed to civilians and as aid shipments in the besieged enclave are severely disrupted, and assistance was failing to reach people most in need.
The US decision also comes a day after more than 100 Palestinians were killed during a chaotic attempt to supply aid to civilians in northern Gaza. Palestinian authorities said Israeli troops opened fire on the people as they rushed towards the food. Israel said some people were killed in a rush to the aid trucks.
“We need to do more and the United States will do more and in the coming days, we are going to join with our friends from Jordan and others to provide airdrops of supplies,” Biden said, adding that the US is also exploring the possibility of opening “a marine corridor delivering large amounts of humanitarian assistance”.
The president added: “Aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough now — it’s nowhere nearly enough. Innocent lives are on the line and children’s lives are on the line.”
The Pentagon is still finalising plans for the airdrops, which will begin in the coming days, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said. Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have also airdropped assistance into Gaza.
“It will be part of a larger, longer sustained effort to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance,” Kirby said. “It’ll be a supplement to not a replacement for moving things in by ground.”
The UN has warned that a quarter of Gaza’s population of more than 2mn is on the brink of famine. Aid deliveries to Gaza, especially in the North, have slowed to a trickle and descended into chaos amid increased lawlessness and looting.
Trucks with aid enter the Gaza strip via Egypt and through an Israeli border crossing, but the Israeli military has opened fire on some humanitarian convoys while Palestinian police are refusing to guard deliveries after an air strike on a shipment.
Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities and has created near-impossible conditions for aid deliveries.
Biden said: “Innocent people got caught in a terrible war unable to feed their families and you saw the response when they tried to get aid.”
Efforts to halt the war in Gaza to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas have not yet delivered a breakthrough despite pressure from the US, Qatar and Egypt.
Biden is also under mounting domestic political pressure over his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas and to do more to press Israel to end it.
In Michigan, which was a key state that helped Biden win the 2020 election, more than 100,000 people cast uncommitted protest ballots this week during the Democratic primary, in a sign of anger at White House support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
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