Each airdrop of aid into Gaza can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and will barely scratch the surface of alleviating starvation in the Strip, leading humanitarian organisations have said.

The Israeli government has faced mounting pressure from its allies to allow more aid into Gaza, after five more people died from hunger on Monday, bringing the total number of deaths linked to malnutrition up to 180, including 93 children, since 7 October, 2023, according to Gaza health authorities.

At least 1,400 people have also been killed while attempting to access aid from sites run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) since it began operating in May, according to the UN, with Palestinian officials saying a further 10 were fatally shot by Israeli forces on Monday.

Amid warnings the crisis in Gaza is developing into a famine, countries including the UK, Jordan, France and Israel have resorted to airdrops as a temporary method to reduce suffering.

The limitations of airdrops were acknowledged by the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who said the move “alone cannot alleviate the needs of those desperately suffering in Gaza”, adding that “land routes serve as the only viable and sustainable means of providing aid” in the region.

Caption: Aid pallets are parachuted after being dropped from a military plane over Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on Monday (Photo: AFP)

But leading aid agencies have gone further, saying the method is “expensive, inefficient and can be dangerous”, urging the international community to enable regular, large-scale aid flows by land and “respect humanitarian law”.

What are airdrops and how do they work?

Airdrops are primarily carried out by military planes carrying bundles food, water and supplies such as medicine.

Packages carrying food can weigh about 1,200 pounds, with those containing water weighing more than 2,000 pounds, according to an estimate by The Washington Institute, a foreign policy think-tank.

Packages loaded onto a C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft at King Abdullah II airbase in Zarqa ahead of an airdrop mission over the Gaza Strip on Sunday (Photo Ahmad Shoura/AFP)

The supplies are loaded on to flat pallets attached to parachutes and pushed from the backs of aircraft to reach delivery sites.

Airdrops can be carried out from altitudes ranging from about 300 to up to 5,600 metres in conflict zones, where aircraft are at risk of being hit from ground artillery.

‘Costly, dangerous and largely ineffective’

Leading aid agencies have warned that airdrops cannot be the primary method of delivering aid into Gaza, saying the method is costly, dangerous and inefficient.

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unwra, said airdrops were “at least 100 times more costly than trucks”, which are able to carry “twice as much aid as planes”.

Unwra communications director Juliette Touma told The i Paper that by using open-source data, the agency estimated each airdrop cost approximately $200,000 (£150,300), in comparison to $2,500 (£1,880) per truck delivery.

“We also found other cost estimates that go up to $400,000 (£300,700) per airdrop, but we opted to use the lower cost,” she added.

Unwra warned that airdrops cost up to 100 times more than delivering aid by land (Photo: Mohammed Nassar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The criticisms were backed by Unicef, which said airdrops “are expensive, logistically complex, and limited in the amount and type of aid they can deliver, particularly for items like medical supplies and equipment, fuel or shelter materials”.

A Unicef spokesperson told The i Paper: “There are also risks to communities on the ground, especially in densely populated areas.”

One medic was reportedly killed on Monday after being struck by an aid package, Palestinian media outlets reported. Last year, at least five Palestinians were killed and several others injured in airdrop accidents, according to authorities in Gaza.

Zoe Daniels, the International Rescue Committee’s Country Director for the occupied Palestinian Territories, also warned that airdrops “cannot meet the specialised needs of vulnerable groups – particularly malnourished children who require targeted nutritional and medical support”.

A spokesperson for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) added that “many times the goods are damaged when they hit the ground and are unusable”.

Aid groups have said that letting in trucks of supplies was the only way to stop starvation.

A ‘last resort’ lifeline for Gaza’s starving population?

Israel’s military said 120 aid packages containing food had been dropped into Gaza on Monday by six different countries in collaboration with Cogat, the Israeli body responsible for overseeing aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

But Unicef’s spokesperson said the aid drops would not suffice to replace the “regular, large-scale aid flows by land” necessary to ensuring humanitarian law is respected and the needs of Gaza’s population are met.

This claim is backed by figures from the US Central Command (Centcom) from last year, which show their C-130 cargo planes delivered approximately 12,650 meals per plane, per trip.

That would mean more than 160 flights would be needed to deliver a single meal for every one of Gaza’s roughly 2.1 million population.