Aboard Jordan's aid airdrop over Gaza, a last resort for relief to Palestinians there
FLYING OVER NORTHERN GAZA STRIP — Seventeen-thousand feet in the air, Jordanian air force personnel are unhooking the chains to let pallets of wrapped cardboard boxes attached to parachutes roll out the cargo door.
The aid drop on Thursday is part of a dramatic and desperate effort to get food to Gaza's starving population as Israel allows only a trickle of aid to enter through the country's sole working land border.
Airdrops — expensive, cumbersome and inefficient — are considered by the aid community the last resort of food delivery. But Jordan hopes that the tons of food it is dropping during the 5-month-old war in Gaza will save at least some lives.
The collapse of aid delivery to Gaza was illustrated on Thursday by the deaths of what Gaza health authorities say were trying to get to a convoy of trucks delivering food near Gaza City. The Israeli military said that many Palestinians died in the crush to reach the
