Gaza Strip: At least five people crushed to death by air-dropped humanitarian aid package

At least five people were killed and 10 others were injured when a humanitarian aid package was airdropped over the Gaza Strip. An official at the Al-Shifa hospital, in Gaza City, released this information this Friday.

Mohammed al-Chiekh, head nurse at the hospital, confirmed this to the AFP agency. The injured were transferred to the hospital after one or several batches of humanitarian aid fell too quickly in an area where people gathered to recover the packages.

A video is circulating on social media that shows a transport plane dropping the packages. A good number of packages were dropped and the attached parachutes began to deploy. The video shows how at least one of the packages' parachutes failed to properly deploy. The parachute ended up coming apart.

The package fell at a high speed and crashed down outside the view of the camera. Even other packages, whose parachutes did deploy, fell relatively forcefully to the ground. The Palestinians seen in the video tried to move away from the falling packages. As soon as they thought they were safe, they ran towards the packages that landed.

A witness questioned by AFP said that the package with a parachute that did not open landed on the roof of a house. "The parachute did not open and the load fell like a rocket against the roof of one of the houses," a man who allegedly saw the scene told AFP.

There is no confirmation about which country the plane was from that dropped this batch of humanitarian aid. According to CBS, several countries could have carried out this mission. Jordan, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Egypt and the United States have all airdropped aid packages.

Maritime corridor

The Biden administration stated yesterday that this method of distributing humanitarian aid is not ideal or efficient. For this reason, President Biden announced this Thursday that he ordered the military to build a temporary port on the coast of the Gaza Strip.

Cargo ships will be able to use this dock to unload humanitarian aid in large quantities. It should be enough to help the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. According to plans, the aid will depart from Cyprus. The operation will be carried out in collaboration with the European Union, Israel and several humanitarian agencies with a presence in the Gaza Strip.