Canada to start airdropping aid into Gaza within days: source

The Canadian government will begin airdropping aid into Gaza within the next week, a government source tells CBC News.

Months of violence have followed the events of Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killed approximately 1,200 people and took roughly 250 others hostage, according to Israeli accounts. Since then, Israeli strikes have killed approximately 29,000 people, according to Gaza's Hamas-led health authority.

Humanitarian groups are calling for more aid to be allowed into Gaza to help with an intense and worsening crisis there. The World Food Programme recently suspended aid shipments into northern Gaza, citing «complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order» and warning again about the risk of starvation in the region.

Some of Canada's allies have already started such airdrop operations.

Aid funded by the United Kingdom was recently dropped to a hospital in northern Gaza. The Netherlands and France also have been involved in airdrop operations.

Jordan has dropped aid to a field hospital it runs in Gaza several times since the beginning of the conflict. Israel approved and co-ordinated with a Jordanian drop in November, according to Reuters.

A UN report said in December that Gaza's entire population is experiencing a food crisis, with one in four facing starvation.

International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen told CBC Radio's last week that Canada was considering airdropping aid.

«We have to do everything we can to avert mass starvation in northern Gaza and beyond,» he told host Catherine Cullen.

Hussen recently travelled to Jordan and the Egyptian border with Gaza. He described what he saw near Gaza as a «really dire situation.»

«People are in a very desperate situation and they're doing