5 Killed, 10 Injured As Gaza Aid Airdrop Parachute Fails To Open

A medic at Gaza's largest hospital said Friday a humanitarian airdrop in the north of the Palestinian territory killed five people and wounded 10.

The casualties were taken to Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital, the emergency room's head nurse, Mohammed al-Sheikh, told AFP.

Sheikh said the deadly airdrop occurred north of the coastal Al-Shati refugee camp.

A witness from the camp told the news agency AFP he and his brother followed the parachuted aid in the hope of getting "a bag of flour".

"Then, all of a sudden, the parachute didn't open and fell down like a rocket on the roof of one of the houses," said Mohammed al-Ghoul.

"Ten minutes later I saw people transferring three martyrs and others injured, who were staying on the roof of the house where the aid packages fell," the 50-year-old told AFP.

The United States and Jordan are among the countries to have carried out airdrops in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people are facing dire conditions after more than five months of war.

A Jordanian military source told AFP that the kingdom was not involved in Friday's fatal drop.

"The technical defect that caused some parachutes carrying aid not to open and to fall freely to the ground during the airdrop on Gaza on Friday was not from a Jordanian aircraft," the source said. 

"The four Jordanian aircraft that carried out the airdrop in partnership with five other countries carried out its mission without any glitches."

Referring to the five killed on Friday, the government media office in Hamas-run Gaza said airdrops were "futile" and "not the best way for aid to enter."

The United Nations has said airdrops or a proposed maritime aid corridor cannot be a substitute for land deliveries, urging more trucks to be permitted to reach Gaza through more border crossings.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)