ABOVE GAZA — From the sky, a besieged Gaza briefly came into view early Saturday as the military plane opened its back door and a mass of tents could be seen near the Mediterranean coast from a side window.
Then, boxes of baby formula, food and other supplies were pushed out the back and parachuted to the ground — a tiny fraction of what is required for the enclave’s population, which is facing a spiraling hunger crisis — delivered by a method that experts say is inefficient, dangerous and in some cases deadly.
On Saturday, a 14-year-old boy named Muhannad Eid died after being struck by an aid package from one of the several airdrops over Gaza, his brother, Muhammad Eid, said.
“This is an aerial humiliation, not aid,” Eid said. “We need protection. We want international protection.”
But with mounting international outrage about deaths from starvation in Gaza under Israel’s offensive and crippling aid restrictions, several countries have started dropping food, medicine and other supplies into Gaza from the sky.
“Those aid drops are actually causing havoc,” Dr. Umar Burney, a Texas-based orthopedic surgeon volunteering in Gaza, told NBC News in a telephone interview Saturday from the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in northern Gaza. Multiple explosions could be heard ringing out nearby as he spoke.
Burney, who has been treating patients in Gaza for the past week, added that he had taken care of “multiple patients who’ve been crushed by these sort of unplanned, unannounced aid drops on top of their heads, literally on top of their heads.”
Saturday’s flight from an air base just outside the Jordanian capital Amman took place a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government faced a wave of condemnation from European leaders, Arab nations and a group representing the families of hostages after it announced plans to take control of Gaza City in the north of the enclave.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the plan on Friday as a “dangerous escalation” that risks “deepening the already catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians.”
His colleague Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights,…
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