Air-dropped aid kills 3-year-old Palestinian boy in southern Gaza

GAZA — 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.

The family was eating breakfast when pallets dropped from airplanes and careened towards the displacement area, Sami Ayyad, the grandfather of the boy, told CNN. Several family members attempted to take cover inside their improvised tents – but the falling parcel killed Sami instantly, Ayyad recalled. Sami’s aunt and cousin were also wounded on their foot and face, respectively, Ayyad added.

“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.

CNN footage from the aftermath shows blood stains on the ground, as Ayyad points to the area where he says Sami was killed. Family members can be seen congregating at the displacement camp, their eyes welling up with tears. Elsewhere, men, women and children walk barefoot among a sea of tents made of flimsy sheeting.

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.”

Sami’s uncle, Mohammad Ayyad, told CNN: “Our lives are… humiliation, death, horror. I sleep at night not sure if I will wake up.

“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.

CNN has reached out to the UAE for comment. CNN video from the displacement camp in Khan Younis on Saturday shows crates of aid, with the UAE flag stamped on cardboard boxes.

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.

But human rights agencies have repeatedly condemned airdrops as an inefficient way of getting aid to Palestinians in Gaza, instead urging Israeli authorities to lift controls on land crossings into the enclave. CNN has previously reported on aid drops killing people in search of food in Gaza.

Fikr Shalltoot, the Gaza director for the NGO, Medical Aid for Palestinians, accused the Israeli government of “using starvation as a weapon of war across Gaza.”

“For a three-year-old boy to survive more than a year of Israeli military attacks, in what has been described by UN experts and the International Court of Justice as a potential genocide, to then be killed by an airdrop of food is a complete travesty,” Shalltoot said in a statement to CNN on Monday.

“Palestinians in Gaza have the right to more than meagre charity dropped from the sky.”

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.

“I don’t want aid. My son is gone. He was standing there telling me to look at the parachutes. He ran away when he saw it coming close to him,” he told CNN on Saturday.

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