Airdrops of humanitarian aid are leading to fatal fights in Gaza as the desperate and hungry battle to reach parachuted food and essentials, amid fears that little of the much-needed assistance is reaching those most threatened by a looming famine.
Eyewitness accounts, images and interviews with aid workers in Gaza suggest the high-profile airdrop operations are of limited help, and have contributed to growing anarchy there.
Yousef Abu Rabee, a strawberry farmer in northern Gaza before the conflict, said he had given up trying to reach aid drops to provide for his family after being shot at by unidentified armed men during a recent chaotic struggle around one parachuted pallet of assistance.
“Since then, I have stopped going as it is not worth all this risk, as a person is vulnerable to injury and death at any moment,” Rabee, 25, said.
A Red Crescent paramedic said that five people were shot dead yesterday and dozens more injured during aid distribution in northern Gaza. Twelve people drowned trying to get to aid dropped by plane off a Gaza beach last week. Others have reported deaths by stabbing, as well as in stampedes.
Earlier last month, five were killed near the coastal refugee camp known as al-Shati, one of the most devastated parts of Gaza, after a parachute failed to deploy properly and aid fell on a group of waiting men, teenagers and children.
On 25 March, the UK parachuted more than 10 tonnes of aid, including water, rice, cooking oil, flour, tinned goods and baby formula, along Gaza’s northern coastline, the Ministry of Defence in London said.
Critics say the airdrops by the UK, US, France, Spain, Jordan and other countries are “inefficient, dangerous and expensive” and primarily aimed at diverting public anger as international powers fail to convince Israel to allow more aid to reach Gaza.
Aid agencies said only about a fifth of required supplies are entering Gaza as Israel persists with an air and ground offensive, triggered by Hamas’s 7 October attack which killed 1,200, mostly civilians, and that deliveries by air or sea directly on to beaches are no substitute for increased supplies coming in by land via Israel or Egypt.
Last week the International Court of Justice said Israel must act immediately “to allow … urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.
Israel initially imposed a total blockade on Gaza after the Hamas attacks but then allowed a small amount of strictly controlled aid into the territory.
Aid convoys have to traverse up to 25 miles(40km) of smashed roads strewn with rubble to reach the north, where the threat of famine is greatest. Many convoys have been blocked or delayed by Israeli forces. Some have been looted by organised gangs or desperate individuals.
Israel said it puts no limit on the amount of aid entering Gaza and blames problems on UN agencies, which it said are inefficient.
Rabee said he had fled his home in the town of Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, in the first days of Israel’s offensive, which has so far killed 33,000, mostly women and children. Earlier this month, he returned to Beit Lahia, which is now reduced to rubble.
“At one stage, aid began to arrive by airdrop, and people began to track and watch for this aid where it was landing near the beach. People were gathering in large numbers in unimaginable scenes … fighting to get a single item any way they could,” Rabee said.
When he managed to reach an aid parcel, he was surrounded by men with guns. “Many armed men gathered around me and started shooting to keep me and the others away from the aid, which forced me to leave it in the end and go away without getting anything,” Rabee told the Observer.
Jalal Muhammad Harb Warsh Agha, a 51-year-old livestock trader, now in Rafah, said the airdrops had “led to the outbreak of many troubles with fighting and crimes among the citizens there, through which I lost one of my relatives”.
Nariman Salman, 42, said that her eldest son had been stabbed to death in a fight over assistance airdropped to northern Gaza.
“We fled to Rafah but left my son in our home in the north. This was a terrible mistake. When he went with his cousin to find the airdropped assistance, there was a big fight and the two of them were attacked and someone stabbed him straight in the heart,” Salman said.
“These airdrops not only caused the death of my son, they also caused a lot of trouble and fighting amongst people as there isn’t enough and everyone wants to take what they need. So someone with a gun or a knife will get the aid for himself and leave most people helpless.”
Aid officials in Gaza are already seeing deaths caused by acute malnutrition among the most vulnerable – young children, the sick and the elderly. There are acute concerns for those left without protection, such as widows or orphans.
David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, said at the start of March that airdrops were a measure of desperation: “The simple truth is that we wouldn’t need airdrops if the crossings were properly open, there were more crossing points, the bureaucracy was reduced and above all that the humanitarian case for a ceasefire was recognised. This is where all diplomacy must be urgently focused”.
Juliette Touma, the communications director at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said reports of fatalities underlined that the best way to deliver aid to people in Gaza is by road and with the United Nations, including UNRWA, which Israel recently banned from travel to northern Gaza.
“This is the most efficient, fastest, cheapest and, most importantly, safest way to reach people with much-needed humanitarian assistance,” Touma said.
