Belgium has decided to airdrop aid into Gaza and dispatched a military transport plane on Monday to begin delivering emergency support, after US cargo aircraft dropped food over the weekend.
The foreign ministry said that “due to the difficulties of access and the complex situation on the ground, the Belgian government has approved an airdrop operation for emergency aid.”
Belgian Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder in a post on X, formerly Twitter, said “40 military personnel will be deployed to carry out several drops in the coming days.”
The A400M transport plane was due to travel first to Jordan, which is coordinating efforts to supply aid by air, and from there be used to drop food and “hygiene products” into Gaza.
Since the war began, Israel has barred entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies, except for a trickle of aid entering the south from Egypt at the Rafah crossing and Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing.
The UN says a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people face starvation. Aid officials have said that airdrops are not an efficient means of distributing aid and are a measure of last resort.
