Jordan’s king takes part in Gaza aid airdrop

AFP | Amman, Jordan                                             

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Jordanian King Abdullah II recently took part in a humanitarian aid drop into war-torn Gaza, according to state TV footage showing him aboard an air force C-130 transport plane.

The king can be seen on board the flight in military uniform, in the 56-second video broadcast on Jordan's Al Mamlaka channel on Monday.

He was helping soldiers drop a crate said to contain humanitarian and medical aid bound for the Jordanian field hospital in northern Gaza, in a joint operation with the Netherlands.

In mid-December, King Abdullah's daughter, Princess Salma, a first lieutenant and pilot in the Royal Jordanian Air Force, also took part in an airdrop of medical supplies to the field hospital.

On November 20, Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein arrived in Egypt's El-Arish airport near Gaza to supervise delivery of the second Jordanian field hospital to the besieged Palestinian territory.

US President Joe Biden thanked Jordan for providing humanitarian aid, during a White House meeting Monday where the king appealed for a full ceasefire to end the war in Gaza.

Abdullah "personally got in a plane and helped conduct an air drop of urgently needed medical supplies into Gaza", Biden said.

"I understand that two of his children have also joined those air drops. 

They helped fly humanitarian supplies in." Jordan has conducted 11 airdrop operations since the war broke out on October 7 between Israel and Hamas militants in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Amman has delivered a total of almost 720 tonnes of humanitarian aid from 49 aircraft, 11 of them via airdrops, according to the Jordanian Royal Charity Commission.

325 Jordanian trucks also delivered a total of 4,376 tonnes of aid by land, according to the Commission