(Dan Tri) – US President Joe Biden has announced a plan to drop food and essential supplies on the Gaza Strip, as the humanitarian crisis becomes increasingly severe.
Palestinians run along the streets as humanitarian aid is dropped in Gaza City on March 1 (Photo: AFP).
`We need to do more and America will do more,` President Biden told reporters on March 1, saying `the aid being sent to the Gaza Strip is not nearly enough.`
President Biden said the plan to deploy planes to drop aid, including food and necessities, on the Gaza Strip will take place in the next few days.
Other countries, including Jordan and France, also launched relief supplies into Gaza.
At the White House, spokesman John Kirby emphasized that the aid drops would become a `sustainable effort`.
President Biden said the US is also considering the possibility of establishing a maritime corridor to deliver large amounts of aid to Gaza.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCH) said at least 576,000 people across Gaza, a quarter of the region’s population, are `facing high levels of deprivation and hunger.`
According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), almost the entire population of 2.2 million people need food aid, with one in six children under two years old suffering from severe malnutrition.
`Gaza is witnessing the worst levels of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,` WFP Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau said at the United Nations Security Council on February 27.
Gaza health authorities accused Israeli forces of killing more than 100 people while trying to reach an aid convoy near Gaza City early on the morning of February 29.
Israel blamed crowds surrounding aid vehicles, saying victims were trampled or run over.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October 2023.
People in the Gaza Strip have to eat livestock feed and even cacti to survive.
According to health authorities in Gaza, the high death toll underscores the horrific months-long ordeal of the Palestinian people in the strip, in which Israel’s aerial bombing campaigns and ground attacks have caused
The US proposed a `temporary ceasefire` at the United Nations earlier this month, but vetoed calls for an immediate end to the conflict.