Onboard a plane dropping aid over starving and devastated Gaza – Technologist

A land of utter desolation. This was the view of the Gaza Strip from 500 meters above. Rows of destroyed buildings and houses, as if crushed, in blocks and whole neighborhoods, stretching for miles; the gray of the ruins blending with the sandy yellow of what were once roads and streets. Here and there, the almost unreal silhouette of an intact building emerged, as if spared from the storm of iron and fire that has swept across this Palestinian territory. The countryside was just as battered. The farms appeared swept away by the wave of destruction, offering a stark contrast with the lush vegetation on the Israeli side, which seemed to enclose the Palestinian territory.

On Tuesday, April 9, 16 aircraft took part in an operation to drop humanitarian aid over the Gaza Strip, including two aircraft from the French-German Rhine transport squadron: a Luftwaffe KC-130 and a French Air Force C-130 J, which Le Monde was able to board. The operation mobilized at least eight countries, a scale desired by Jordan on the eve of the Eid holiday.

“France was the first country to respond to Jordan’s requests. We did so as early as January 4 for a GPS-guided airdrop to benefit the two Jordanian field hospitals in Gaza,” said Alexis Le Cour Grandmaison, the French ambassador in Amman. “At the end of February, Jordan wanted to step up

these operations by associating a greater number of countries and moving from GPS guidance to more massive operations, directly benefiting the population, in a context of congestion of crossing points or their non-opening by Israel,” he explained.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it’

Tuesday was the 15^th such French-German mission, in addition to the dozen or so airdrops carried out solely by French aircraft. But even for the most seasoned soldiers, the discovery of the scale of the destruction in the Gaza Strip, continuously bombed for six months by the Israeli army, was a shock. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s crazy,” said one of them. “Yet I’ve done Mosul, Raqqa [two cities in Iraq and Syria recaptured from the Islamic State organization in 2017]. There, people could get out and flee the fighting. Here, they’re stuck in the middle of a war zone,” he continued. “During my first drop, at very low altitude, you could see people and kids chasing after the pallets before they reached the ground; it turns your guts,” added another.

Approximately 7.5 tonnes of humanitarian aid was transported by the French C-130 parachuted on this Tuesday between the town of Beit Lahiya and the sea, in the far north of the territory. On board, there was rice, corn, tinned food, some toys and children’s clothing. Nearly 300,000 people are trying to survive in this part of the Gaza Strip, where aid trucks from the south arrive in dribs and drabs. The famine has already begun to take its toll.

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