US to airdrop aid to Gaza, truce talks to resume again
WASHINGTON: The US will begin airdropping emergency humanitarian assistance into Gaza, President Joe Biden said Friday, a day after more than 100 Palestinians were killed during a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops.
The president announced the move after at least 115 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 others were injured, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, on Thursday when witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire as huge crowds raced to pull goods off an aid convoy.
Biden said the airdrops would begin soon and that the United States was looking into additional ways to facilitate getting badly needed aid into the warbattered territory to ease the suffering of Palestinians.
“In the coming days we’re going to join with our friends in Jordan and others who are providing airdrops of additional food and supplies” and will “seek to open up other avenues in, including possibly a marine corridor,” Biden said.
The president twice referred to airdrops to help Ukraine, but White House officials clarified that he was referring to Gaza.
Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a stampede linked to the chaos and that its troops fired at some in the crowd who they believed moved toward them in a threatening way. The Israeli government has said it is investigating the matter.
The head of a Gaza City hospital that treated some of those wounded said Friday that more than 80% had been struck by gunfire.
On Friday a UN team visited some of the wounded from the aid incident, in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, and saw a “large number of gunshot wounds”, UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said.
The hospital received 70 of the dead, and around 200 wounded were still there during the team’s visit, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
He was not aware of the team examining those killed, but said “from what they saw in terms of the patients who were alive getting treatments is that there was a large number of gunshot wounds”.
Biden made his announcement while hosting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White house.
The White House, State Department and Pentagon had been weighing the merits of US military airdrops of assistance for several months, but had held off due to concerns that the method is inefficient, has no way of ensuring the aid gets to civilians in need and cannot make up for overland aid deliveries.
Administration officials said their preference was to further increase overland aid deliveries through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border points and to try to get Israel to open the Erez Crossing into northern Gaza.
The incident on Thursday appeared to tip the balance and push Biden to approve airdrops.
He stressed that ground routes will be continued to be used to get aid into Gaza, and that the airdrops are a supplemental effort.
Egypt, France, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have already used airdrops to get aid into Gaza since the conflict started in October.
Gaza truce talks are due to resume in Cairo on Sunday, two Egyptian security sources said on Saturday, though an Israeli news outlet reported Israel would not send a delegation until it got a full list of Israeli hostages who are still alive.
Biden has said he hopes a ceasefire will be in place by the time of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which starts on March 10.
There was no immediate comment from Israel or the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which have been negotiating via mediators including Egypt and Qatar.
International pressure for a ceasefire has grown, with more than 30,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s Gaza offensive, according to Gaza health authorities, and the UN warning that a quarter of the population are one step away from famine.
Vowing to wipe out Hamas, Israel launched the offensive in response to the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli towns, in which 1,200 people were killed in Israel and another 253 abducted, according to Israeli tallies.
The Egyptian sources said Israeli and Hamas delegations were expected to arrive in Cairo on Sunday.
They said that an incident on Thursday in which more than 100 Palestinians seeking aid were killed by Israeli fire according to Gaza authorities, had not slowed down the talks, but instead pushed negotiators to hasten to preserve progress.