OAN’s James Meyers
1:15 PM –Friday, March 1, 2024
President Joe Biden announced that the United States will be dropping food aid into the Gaza Strip, following a United Nations warning that claimed residents in the area were suffering from a famine due to the Israel-Hamas war.
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“In the coming days we’re going to join with our friends in Jordan and others in providing airdrops of additional food and supplies,” Biden said ahead of a meeting with the Italian prime minister in the Oval Office on Friday.
“We should be getting hundreds of trucks in, not just several,” he continued. “We’re going to pull out every stop we can.”
During the announcement, Biden reiterated that the U.S. is trying to push for a future ceasefire between Hamas and Israel so that additional aid can be brought to Gaza.
This comes after White House officials voiced concerns regarding the possibility of a worsening famine that could affect the majority of Gaza’s population.
Additionally, Samantha Power, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, announced earlier this week that the U.S. was sending $53 million in additional humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
“She’s working on expanding the channels, the corridors through which that aid can flow. We’re going to keep at this,” White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said Thursday. “The events of this morning just underscored how deep and dire the humanitarian needs amongst civilian population in Gaza are right now.”
According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, 115 people had died and 760 were wounded when a crowd of Palestinians stood by waiting for humanitarian aid trucks in Gaza.
However, The Israel Defense Forces announced that criminals had looted the aid supplies in the trucks.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a post on X (Twitter) on Thursday, “This morning humanitarian aid trucks entered northern Gaza, residents surrounded the trucks and looted the supplies being delivered. As a result of the pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks, dozens of Gazans were killed and injured.”
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