Spain announced today that it has air-dropped 12 tons of food into the Gaza Strip, whose residents are threatened with starvation, according to the UN, after 22 months of war between Israel and Hamas.

“Spain is taking part in the humanitarian aid mission from the air using a military aircraft of our Air Force, an A400,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares announced, posting a video of the operation on X.

A total of 24 packages were dropped, each containing 500 kilograms, meaning a total of 12 tons of food equivalent to approximately 2,500 rations,” he added.

In addition to these drops, which the Spanish government announced earlier this week, Albares noted that “trucks with Spanish humanitarian aid” are currently “parked at the border with the Gaza Strip” waiting to enter the enclave.

“The air route is inadequate (…) Israel must definitively open all land crossings for humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip en masse“, the Spanish prime minister insisted, demanding “a ceasefire that will allow the distribution of aid.”

Several Western countries, including France and Britain, have decided in recent days to send aid by air to the Palestinian enclave facing a dramatic humanitarian crisis, following the lead of Middle Eastern countries.

However, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazarini, has stressed that air drops of aid “will not end the worsening famine”. “They are costly, ineffective, and may even kill starving civilians,” he has added in a post on X.