The authorities in Gaza have called for an end to airdropped aid and advocated for increased land deliveries.
They revealed that 12 persons tragically drowned while attempting to retrieve aid parcels dropped into the Mediterranean.
Ahmed Abu Qamar, a Gaza-based researcher for EuroMed Rights, witnesses reports that people entering the water from a northern Gaza beach on Monday afternoon, March 25, to collect the aid. He further noted that around a dozen individuals lost their lives, with at least one becoming entangled in a parachute.
The responsible country for the airdrop remained unclear.
Three of approximately 80 aid bundles dropped by the United States on Monday “were reported to have had parachute malfunctions and landed in the water,” a Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
However, she said that she could not confirm the reports of the drownings.
The aid was intentionally dropped over water and intended to be carried to land by wind drift, to mitigate potential harm in the event that the parachutes failed to deploy, Ms. Singh said.
The fatalities were not the first connected to aid drops. Earlier this month, the authorities in Gaza said that at least five Palestinians had been killed and several others wounded when airdropped aid packages fell on them in Gaza City.
On Tuesday, March 26, the Gaza government media office said that six other people had died during what it characterized as a stampede trying to get aid that was airdropped in other locations.
The United Nations and other aid organizations say that trucks, rather than planes, are the cheapest, safest and most effective means of delivering aid to Gaza, a territory whose population of more than two million faces a hunger crisis that humanitarian organizations say borders on famine.
Watch a video from the scene of the drowning below.
