March 2, 2024, 15:15 GMT
Updated 1 hour ago
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To see: The USA sends humanitarian aid to Gaza by parachute
The US has conducted its first aid airdrop to Gaza, parachuting more than 30,000 meals from three military aircraft.
The US Central Command said the operation was carried out in cooperation with the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
Officials say the decline was the first of many announced by President Joe Biden on Friday.
He vowed to step up aid after at least 112 people were killed on Thursday when crowds stormed a convoy.
C-130s dropped more than 38,000 meals along the Gaza coast, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
“These airdrops are part of a sustained effort to bring more aid to Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes,” it said.
Other countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Egypt and Jordan, have previously dropped aid into Gaza, but this is the United States' first.
In his statement on Friday, President Biden said the US would “insist that Israel provide more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need.”
U.S. officials say Israel is supporting the mission, which is being carefully planned to ensure the safety of people on the ground.
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Dozens of people are being treated at al-Shifa Hospital following Thursday's tragedy
Aid groups have said airdrops are an inefficient, expensive and complex way to deliver aid.
The fact that the US has chosen this method highlights the severity of the humanitarian crisis and the difficulty of providing aid by road to civilians in the Gaza Strip.
In Thursday's incident, 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured as they crowded around aid trucks on the southwestern edge of Gaza City.
Hamas accused Israel of firing on civilians, but Israel said most died in a crush after it fired warning shots.
Shots can be heard in footage from the crime scene and people can be seen climbing over trucks and ducking behind the vehicles.
Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told the BBC that he and a team sent to Al-Shifa Hospital found a large number of people with gunshot wounds.
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Watch: Devastation after dozens died during aid operation in Gaza
Mark Regev, special adviser to the Israeli prime minister, previously told CNN that Israel was not directly involved and that the shooting came from “Palestinian armed groups.”
Leaders from around the world have called for a full investigation.
The United Nations World Food Program has warned that famine is looming in northern Gaza, where very little aid has been received in recent weeks and where an estimated 300,000 people live with little food and clean water.
The Israeli military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign to destroy Hamas – which is banned as a terrorist organization by Israel, Britain and others – after its gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on October 7 and returned 253 hostages to Gaza .
Since then, more than 30,000 people, including 21,000 children and women, have been killed in Gaza, about 7,000 are missing and at least 70,450 have been injured, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza.