On northern Gaza: from the sky, a besieged gaza appeared briefly in view on early Saturday when the military plane opened its back door and you could see a mass of tents near the Mediterranean coast from a side window.
Then, the formula boxes for babies, food and other supplies were expelled from behind and parachute to the ground, a small fraction of what is required for the town of the enclave, which faces a spiral hunger crisis, delivered by a method that experts say that it is inefficient, dangerous and, in some cases, dead.
But with the growing international outrage over hunger deaths in Gaza under the offensive and paralyzing restrictions of Israel, several countries have begun to drop food, medicines and other supplies in gaza from heaven.
“Those help falls are actually wreaking havoc,” Dr. Umar Burney, an orthopedic surgeon based in Texas in Gaza, NBC News, told NBC News in a telephone interview on Saturday from the Baptist Al-Ahli hospital in northern Gaza. Multiple explosions were heard close while talking.
Burney, who has been dealing with patients in Gaza during the past week as part of a team with Medogobal, a non -profit organization with headquarters in Chicago that organizes voluntary medical missions to the enclave, added that there was care of “several patients who have been crushed by this type of non -planned help falls and not announced at the top of their heads, literally on their heads.”
Saturday’s flight from an air base on the outskirts of the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place one day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government faced a wave of condemnation of European leaders, Arab nations and a group that represents hostage families after they announced plans to take control of the city of Gaza in the north of the enclave.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, condemned the plan on Friday as a “dangerous climb” that runs the risk of “deepening the already catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians.”
His colleague Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, also said in a statement that “the Israeli government should put all its efforts to save the life of Gaza civilians by allowing the complete flow of humanitarian aid.”
Hunger deaths in Gaza have been increasing after Israel launched a paralyzing block that except the entry of food and other vital supplies to the enclave in early March before ending the fire with Hamas.
He lifted the blockade in May, allowing a basic amount of help to Gaza, largely distributed under a new and controversial distribution system led by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation supported by the United States and Israel.
Since then, almost 1,400 people have been killed and more than 4,000 wounds while looking for food, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in an update on Tuesday. “At least 859 people have been killed in GHF sites since the beginning of GHF operations,” he added.
When asked to go to the increase in death by NBC News on Wednesday, GHF said that the convoys of help belonging to the United Nations and other organizations in the past often passed near these places and were regularly looted by large crowds.
The Israeli army said in a statement on Saturday that allows GHF to “distribute help to Gaza residents independently.” He said that after “incidents in which damages were reported to civilians who arrived at the distribution facilities, exhaustive exams were performed” and that “systematic learning processes” to improve the operational response are underway.
Faced with the growing global outrage, Israel began tactical pauses in some parts of Gaza to allow greater help to enclave at the end of last month. Airdrop supplies in the territory also began to allow countries, although help groups have criticized this delivery method.
“These drops of air are falling in extremely populated areas. They are dangerous,” said Caroline Willemen, project coordinator at a Médecins Sin Frontières clinic (doctors without borders) in the city of Gaza, British Brothcaster Sky News on Saturday. “They have fallen into tents, people have been injured,” he added.
Help groups have also pointed out that drops can only provide a fraction of what is required for the Gaza population of around 2 million people as the hunger crisis continues in a spiral and much of the enclave is submerged in famine conditions.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, general director of the World Health Organization, told journalists on Thursday that at least 99 people, including 29 children under 5, have died from malnutrition this year. These numbers are likely to be underestimated, he said, and The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza cites higher figures.
On Friday, the Ministry said the hospitals had registered four deaths “due to starvation and malnutrition” in a period of time of 24 hours, including two children. This brought the total number of starvants due to 201, including 98 children.
Israel has argued that there is no hunger in Gaza and that the situation in the field is exaggerating, almost 22 months after he launched his offensive after the attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 hostages, marking a significant increase in a decades conflict.
Since then, more than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including thousands of children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the enclave, while much of the territory has been destroyed.
Foreign journalists have been forbidden to enter Gaza independently since Israel launched its offensive. Traveling on help flights has become one of the few ways to witness destruction in the territory of first hand.
