‘We don’t want aid. We want dignity.’ Air-dropped aid kills 3-year-old Palestinian boy in southern Gaza, family says

A 3-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by air-dropped aid in the southern city of Khan Younis on Saturday, according to his relatives, as the humanitarian crisis spawned by the Israeli offensive compounds severe hunger across the Gaza Strip.

“I was sitting here with the boy, and the moment I left him … the package fell on him,” Ayyad said. “There was only a second between me and him. I carried him and started running.

“We have no hospitals. I ran like crazy, but the boy died instantly. I couldn’t save him. Blood started coming out of his nose and mouth,” he added.

A number of countries have air-dropped aid into Gaza, including the United States, United Kingdom, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

“We don’t want aid. We want dignity,” said Ayyad. “Enough with the humiliation and insult that we are receiving from the Arabs, not just the Israelis. Those who have no mercy on us — look at our children, our women, our elderly.”

“We are human beings, not animals to drop food (to) from the sky,” he added.

The United Arab Emirates airdropped 81 food packages into Khan Younis on Saturday, according to the Israeli agency which controls the flow of aid into Gaza. More than 10,000 packages have been airdropped in recent months, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, added.

Israel’s sustained restrictions on aid entering the strip have sapped critical supplies, condemning the entire population of more than 2.2 million people to the risk of famine, according to a UN-backed report. About 1.84 million Palestinians are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, according to a report published Thursday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which assesses global food insecurity and malnutrition.

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza has leveled neighborhoods, erased entire families and spawned a crisis of severe hunger, displacement and disease. At least 42,603 Palestinians have been killed and another 99,795 injured since Israel launched its war in Gaza on October 7, the Ministry of Health there said on Monday.

Israel launched its military offensive on October 7 after the militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, attacked southern Israel. At least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others abducted, according to Israeli authorities.

Sami and his loved ones had been staying in Khan Younis after they were displaced by the Israeli military campaign at least six times, according to his father, Mahmoud.

“There was an airstrike on people here, and he survived,” he added. “But his fate was to die from a parachute.”