US President Joe Biden announced on Friday that Washington would begin deliveries of relief supplies by air into Gaza, where residents are undergoing severe shortages of food, water and medicine.
“We’re going to join with our friends in providing air drops,” Biden told a press conference at the White House.
The United Nations said on Friday that famine in Gaza was practically inevitable without a change in the Israel-Hamas war.
The UN and other humanitarian organizations have not declared a state of famine in Gaza yet but the spokesman for the United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA), Jens Laerke, warned the situation would be “too late for too many people” once it were declared.
Humanitarian agencies state conditions for the territory’s 2.2 million people were dire.
The spokesman of the World Health Organization, Christian Lindmeier, said ten children had already been officially registered as having starved to death.
Israeli forces opened fire on Thursday as civilians rushed for food aid in an incident that the health ministry described as resulting in the death of more than 100 people. The military said thousands of Gazans surrounded a convoy of 38 aid trucks, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, including some people who were run over.
