Gaza City, March 12 (RHC)-- Hamas says humanitarian aid airdrops do not meet even one percent of demand for aid in Gaza.  A senior official of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says airdropping of humanitarian aid into Gaza is “useless," as the aids are not sufficient.

Ismail Althwabta, who serves as head of the information office of Hamas in Gaza, said on Monday that the United States, which has been behind a number of aid airdrops into Gaza in recent weeks, had better help open border crossings to Gaza to deliver badly-needed food and medicine to the territory.

Althwabta said some 1.2 million children in Gaza are facing a “catastrophic situation” because of months of Israeli blockade and war and the hunger that has been caused by it.  Figures provided by Hamas show more than 31,000 people have been killed in the territory as a result of the Israeli aggression that began in early October.

That comes as more than 2.3 million people living in the narrow strip of land on the Mediterranean have been under a constant Israeli siege since the start of the war.   

Hamas said on Friday that five children had been killed and several other people injured by a humanitarian aid airdrop that landed in Gaza on that day.  However, the U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the deaths were not the result of U.S. airdrops.

Hamas says people in Gaza would have had access to thousands of tons of aid if the U.S. had done enough to pressure Israel to open border crossings into the territory.  That comes as Washington has continuously supported Israel’s brutal war on Gaza by vetoing United Nations resolutions seeking an end to the conflict that could allow the delivery of aid into the Gaza Strip.