Five people have died after a parachute failed on an aid mission into Gaza, reports claim.
An eyewitness of the incident and the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza reported that the five were killed on Friday when at least one parachute failed to deploy the aid that was offered to Gaza.
AFP news agency quoted a Gaza doctor as saying five people were killed. However, this is not officially confirmed yet.
It is unclear which airdrop was involved in the incident.
Who gave the aid ?
The US, Jordan, Egypt, France, the Netherlands and Belgium have been dropping aid packages into Gaza, spending taxpayers’ money to aid the state in times of war. In recent days, concerns about famine among the population have grown, especially as the holy month of Ramadan approaches.
The Jordanian state TV quoted an unrecognised source as denying that a Jordanian aircraft was involved in the incident, clearing Jordan’s involvement in this incident. A US official told CBS an initial review suggested a US airdrop was also not not involved. This leaves Egypt, France, the Netherlands and Belgium’s faulty parachutes to be the suspects.
The United Nations says a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3m population is on the brink of famine and children are actively starving to death.
A video posted to social media on Friday shows the packages given from these countries dropping from a C-17 cargo plane over Al-Shati, A city in the north of Gaza. This is an area that has been largely cut off from any assistance in recent months.
While most of the large packages fall with parachutes deployed, one fails to open and falls in a more uncontrolled way, causing harm to the civilian underneath the package drop. This May have been the cause of death for the 5 people who died because of this.
It is very difficult to say from the video, which is currently unavailable, what may have gone wrong. We do not know if this footage captures the incident in which people were reportedly killed or is the case for faulty help parachutes dropped over the Gaza Strip in the Gaza strip
Aid organisations that worked closely with the governments have been critical of the air drops, saying they were a last resort for the people of the area.
On Friday, the EU, UK, United State and others said they planned to open a sea route to Gaza to deliver aid that could begin operating by this weekend.
The US has said it will be constructing a temporary harbour to ship the aid directly into Gaza.
Western countries have pressed Israel to expand delivery of help packages by road, facilitating more routes and opening additional crossings. This calls for Israel to open up routes on road via Israel into Gaza
United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Cameron said: “We continue to urge Israel to allow more trucks into Gaza as the fastest way to get aid to those who need it.”
Israel denies stopping the entry of these packages to Gaza and accuses aid organisations of failing to distribute it .
Aid lorries have been entering the south of Gaza through the Egyptian-controlled and the Israeli-controlled crossings. But the north, which was the focus of the first phase of the Israeli strike on Gaza, has been largely cut off from assistance in recent months as previously mentioned.
In last week alone more than 100 people were killed trying to reach a ground package convoy amid the growing desperation.
The Israeli military, which was mainly overseeing the private help package deliveries, on Friday said its troops did not fire at Palestinians around packages but at “suspects” who they deemed a threat.
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