Palestinian territories:
Hamas on Thursday called for an end to airdrops of aid after two Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza when an aid pallet crashed into a warehouse after its parachute failed to open.
Several countries, including the United States, Britain and France, have resorted to regular airdrops in northern Gaza, where humanitarian organizations have warned of an impending famine.
Two people were killed on Tuesday when an aid parachute fell on the roof of a warehouse where residents had gathered to collect relief supplies.
Hamas authorities say the latest fatalities have reached at least 21 the number of people killed when aid airdrops went disastrously wrong.
“We reiterate that airdrops pose a real danger to the lives of civilians and do not provide a real solution to alleviate the food crisis plaguing northern Gaza,” Salama Marouf, head of the government's media office in Gaza, said in a statement.
“We call for an immediate cessation of aid in this ineffective and erroneous manner, and we call for the full activation of land crossings to deliver humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.”
With only a trickle of aid reaching the starving north and the United Nations warning of an “impending famine”, foreign governments have turned to airdrops to get aid to the area.
Aid agencies say the situation deteriorated this week after Israeli forces closed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt after taking control.
Aid has also not been transferred to Gaza via the other major border crossing between Israel and the Palestinian territory, Kerem Shalom, after it came under rocket fire three times since Sunday.
Meanwhile, a US container ship loaded with aid for Gaza left Cyprus on Thursday in a new test of a maritime corridor to get aid to the besieged area.
The US-flagged MV Sagamore left Larnaca port after being loaded with aid from Britain, Cyprus and the United States, Cypriot government spokesman Yiannis Antoniou told the official CNA news agency.
US military engineers have built a temporary pier for installation on the Gaza coast to unload maritime aid deliveries.
UN agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned that maritime deliveries and air drops cannot provide aid in the quantities needed to prevent acute food shortages for Gaza's 2.4 million people.
Gaza has been devastated by the war that began with Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,904 people, mostly women and children, according to Israel's Health Ministry.
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