Manna from heaven? More a futile drop in the ocean...

As pallets of aid are flung out of aircraft towards the starving population in Gaza, Bel Trew joins a Jordanian flight, while Nedal Hamdouna watches from the devastated enclave below

- Bel Trew

From the sky, the torched ruins of once-bustling cities shimmer into view as the back of a Jordanian military plane yawns open.

The ground beneath - Gaza - is ash and ruin: the bottom of a firepit stretching out to the horizon.

It is as if giants have torn through anything that once lived here: monstrous teeth have ripped chunks out of the few buildings that still teeter above ground. Everything else appears stamped underfoot.

In some corners, Israeli tank tracks have clawed up what is left of the soil in sickening scrawls. The only flicker of life is the families corralled into tents on scraps of beach in the punishing sunlight.

From the ground looking up, these impossibly huge planes roar into view. It is absurd. Gaza is just 25 miles long and a few miles wide, and entirely accessible by land and sea.

But because of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the strip and war with militant group Hamas, coupled with its crippling blockade, countries across the world are now dropping aid at enormous expense from the sky.

Airdrops are always a last resort, a desperate measure. That is because it rarely gets to those who are most in need, UN officials have told The Independent - those dying of starvation are too weak to endure the hunger games to grab it.

Sometimes it lands in the sea. Sometimes it lands on the very people it is supposed to save, with fatal consequences. “the way in time,” said Moatasem al-Quraan, 31, from central Gaza, about his cousin, nurse Oday al-Quraan, who was crushed to death earlier yesterday.

A pallet of aid being airdropped into central Gaza landed on him as he waited for food, his family and eyewitnesses told The Independent. “He is married and has two children,” said Moatasem. “He was like every citizen in Gaza. He has been hungry for four months.