The United States staged a food airdrop in Gaza Saturday, dumping 66 bundles containing about 38,000 meals.
The planes carried military Meals Ready to Eat that provide a day’s worth of calories in every package, according to The Washington Post.
Sites were picked based on how the military thought airdrops could be safely conducted.
Although the airdrops are expected to continue, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Friday that ground convoys of food will continue, with airdrops supplemental to what can be delivered by ground.
JUST IN: The United States has dropped its first airdrop of humanitarian aid into Gaza as millions are facing starvation.
According to NBC News, three military C-130 planes dropped a total of 66 pallets with 38,000 meals.
Aid organizations however, say the airdrop is… pic.twitter.com/4YZ9i5KhbT
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 3, 2024
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The airdrop fulfilled President Joe Biden’s promise to increase U.S. involvement in getting aid into Gaza.
Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana has said Biden’s political concerns, not humanitarian impulses, are driving the gesture.
Biden is “basing his foreign policy on a Michigan election that he’s going to lose,” according to Axios.
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Last week, more than 100,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the state’s primary in a pro-Palestinian protest of Biden’s Middle East policy.
Others said winning the war should come before humanitarian efforts.
“We didn’t send aid to Germany and Japan in 1944. Let Israel finish the fight with Hamas and then send aid. Sending aid now helps Hamas,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said.
The airdrop took place two days after a deadly calamity in Gaza City when chaos broke out when a convoy arrived with aid, according to the Times of Israel.
Hamas has said 118 people were killed and blamed Israeli troops for shooting civilians.
The Israel Defense Forces said most of the casualties came when people were trampled by the crowd, and that soldiers only fired at Palestinians who threatened them.
Israel said that it is considering new approaches for ensuring future ground deliveries of aid are conducted in a more orderly fashion.
A U.S. official who briefed the media about the food situation in Gaza said lawlessness in the Palestinian enclave has complicated aid distribution, according to The New York Times.
The official, who was not named, said gangs in Gaza are stealing the aid that comes in and then charging sky-high prices for it.
Israeli government representative Tal Heinrich told Fox News Friday that Israel was already allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza in an effort she called “unprecedented” in modern warfare.
In looking at video of civilians trampled in the Thursday incident involving aid delivery, she said “Like every other tragedy throughout this war, it should be blamed on Hamas.”
Hamas, she said, “wants the civilian suffering in Gaza. They want increased casualties, civilian casualties, in Gaza because they’re stealing humanitarian aid from them and they hope that by producing … civilian suffering, Israel will succumb to international pressure” so that “we will stop crushing them on the ground. This is not going to happen.”
