Canadian aircraft carried out an airdrop Monday of nearly 10,000 kilograms of aid to Palestinians in Gaza as Prime Minister Mark Carney warned of a deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the region.
The Canadian Armed Forces flew a CC-130J Hercules aircraft over the Gaza Strip to conduct the drop, said Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Defence Minister David McGuinty in a statement.
Carney, on social media, said the "humanitarian disaster in Gaza is rapidly deteriorating."
"Canada is intensifying our efforts with international partners to develop a credible peace plan and will ensure aid moves forward at the necessary scale," he said.
Carney posted video earlier in the week of Canadian aid pallets delivered to Gaza via Jordanian military aircraft.
Anand said in a separate social media post that she remains in contact with her counterpart in Jordan to ensure Canadian aid reaches Palestinians via air and land.
As international alarm mounts, Canada is one of several countries that have airdropped aid over Gaza. Many food parcels dropped by air have splashed into the Mediterranean Sea or landed in so-called red zones.
On Monday, video footage of aid being dropped over Zuweida in central Gaza showed a desperate scramble by Palestinians, with hundreds racing toward the parcels on the ground. Fistfights broke out and some men wielded batons.
At least one parcel fell on a tent where displaced people had been sheltering, injuring a man who had to be taken to hospital.
The United Nations and other groups have said such drops are costly and dangerous and that they deliver far less aid than trucks.
Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in March, arguing that Hamas had been selling vital supplies and food to pay its fighters. UN agencies say this was not happening to any large extent.
After two and a half months, Israel allowed Americans to launch the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which set up aid distribution sites. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli army fire and American contractors while trying to access those sites.
Israel recently loosened some restrictions on food and medicine reaching the Gaza Strip in response to an international outcry over starvation in the Palestinian territory.
Global Affairs Canada said in a release Monday that Israel's ongoing aid restrictions were a violation of international law and called for them to end immediately.
Last week, Carney cited Israel's aid restrictions and the need to preserve a path to a two-state solution as reasons for declaring that Canada would officially recognize a State of Palestine.
Carney said the move was conditional on the Palestinian Authority undertaking serious reforms and holding an election next year for the first time in two decades.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg
