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Aid agencies warn airdrops are ‘humanitarian theatre’
The Independent
|July 29, 2025
The UK is set to join Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in airdropping aid into Gaza as starvation and malnutrition have reached perilous levels in the war-torn strip.
Following pressure from the international community, Israel has announced brief “humanitarian pauses” between 10am and 8pm each day to allow more aid to be delivered to starving Palestinians, as US president Donald Trump said yesterday: “They have to get food and safety right now.”
The World Health Organisation has warned that malnutrition is on a “dangerous trajectory” in the Gaza Strip, with 63 deaths in July. Around one in five small children in Gaza City are now acutely malnourished, according to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA).
Airdropping is a controversial method of aid distribution, as humanitarian organisations have cited a number of safety and efficiency issues.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) operations manager Jacob Burns called it “humanitarian theatre”, adding that “it’s absolutely not the only way” to get aid into Gaza.
“For the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), airdrops really are a last resort,” spokesperson Sarah Davies told The Independent, as the method comes with its own set of challenges.
What is airdropping?
This story is from the July 29, 2025 edition of The Independent.
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