US to begin airdropping humanitarian aid into Gaza: Biden

By Iclal Turan

WASHINGTON (AA) - US will begin airdropping humanitarian aid into Gaza with Jordan and other countries, President Joe Biden announced on Friday, a day after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid.

"Innocent people got caught in a terrible war, unable to feed their families and you saw the response when they tried to get aid," Biden said ahead of his meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House.

"But we need to do more and the United States will do more in the coming days," Biden said. The US will provide airdrops of additional food and supplies.

He added that the US will also seek to open up other avenues into Gaza, including the possibility of a marine corridor delivering large amounts of humanitarian assistance.

In addition to expanding deliveries by land, Biden said that the US will insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes into Gaza, adding: "Aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough now — it's nowhere nearly enough.

"Innocent lives are on the line and children's lives are on the line," he added.

On Thursday, Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid at the Al Nabulsi roundabout on Al Rashid Street, a major coastal road to the west of Gaza City in northern Gaza, leaving at least 115 Palestinians dead and 760 injured.

The Israeli military said an initial investigation found that Palestinians approached a military checkpoint overseeing the entry of the aid trucks when soldiers fired warning shots and shot at the legs of Palestinians who continued to move toward the troops.

Israel has launched a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than 30,000 Palestinians have since been killed and over 70,457 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.