Airdropped aid kills at least 5 people in Gaza

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Aid packages will be dropped across the northern Gaza Strip on Friday.



CNN

At least five people were killed and 10 others injured when aid packages fell on them from the air in the Al Shati camp west of Gaza City, a journalist on the scene said.

Khader Al Zaanoun told CNN he witnessed aid packages falling from planes over Al Shati camp on Friday, but could not confirm which country was behind the airdrop.

Muhammad Al-Sheikh, head of the emergency department at Al Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, confirmed that five people were killed in the incident.

Some of those injured in the incident and taken to Al Shifa are in serious condition, according to Al-Sheikh.

In a video obtained by CNN on Friday, an airdrop goes wrong when the parachute on a pallet malfunctions. The pallet and its contents can be seen falling at high speed towards a residential building near the Fairoz Towers in western Gaza.

As the tool races toward the ground, you also see free-falling bags disintegrate into a shower of debris, and later you see and hear them hit the ground with audible, loud thuds.

Although most of the other parachutes appear to have deployed correctly, the pallets are still falling at a potentially dangerous rate, which could have made it difficult for anyone to get out of the way when the pallets hit the ground.

In a separate incident on Thursday, footage obtained by CNN shows dozens of parachutes carrying packages descending from a plane performing an air drop.

The video was filmed in an area called Al-Suddaniya, near the northern city of Beit Lahia. You can hear people screaming as the parachutes get closer to the ground.

The US and other countries have dropped humanitarian aid into Gaza amid warnings from the United Nations that hundreds of thousands of people in the besieged enclave are on the brink of famine.

The first US delivery took place on Saturday, delivering 38,000 meals along the Gaza coastline in a combined operation with Jordan.

After US President Joe Biden announced the plans last Friday, aid groups criticized them as ineffective given the scale of the need in Gaza.

Richard Gowan, UN director of the International Crisis Group, said: “Humanitarian aid workers always complain that airdrops are good photo opportunities but a poor way to deliver aid.”

A journalist based in northern Gaza told CNN that Palestinians in northern Gaza are struggling to tap into aid recently dropped by the US and Jordan because it does not include essential food supplies.

Abdel Qader Al Sabbah told CNN that the assisted air drops are “useless”, calling for items that can be stored and used for several days rather than eating individual portions throughout the day.

“You’re lucky if you even get these meals… I don’t even bother looking for these relief packages because people are always fighting over them,” he said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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