Spain made on Friday the air launch of 12 tons of food on the Gaza Strip, a region that after almost 22 months of conflict between Israel and Hamas, faces a extreme humanitarian crisis with imminent risk of famineaccording to United Nations alerts.
“Spain participates in the sending of air aid by air using a military plane from our Air Force, an A400,” said Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, who spread a video of the operation in the social network X.
According to Albares, 24 parachutes were launched with a total of 12,000 kilos of foodequivalent to about 5,500 rations of food.
This aerial shipment adds to the trucks loaded with Spanish humanitarian aid that still remain on the border of Gaza, said the agency EFE.
“The airway is clearly insufficient (…) Israel has to open all the terrestrial steps permanently, so that humanitarian aid between massively,” demanded the Spanish chancellor, who also claimed a stop the fire that facilitates the safe distribution of supplies.
By Gaza
@Aecid_es @Maecgob @Defensagob pic.twitter.com/gam8imqydt
– José Manuel Albares (@jMalbares) August 1, 2025
Spain and support for Gaza
The operation is part of a growing international response.
Countries like France and the United Kingdom have begun to join the Air Air Missionscoordinated in part with nations of the Middle East. However, the releases have generated controversy.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), warned that this route will not solve the food crisis:
“The aerial launch will not end the hunger that is aggravated. It is expensive, ineffective and can even kill hungry civilians,” he wrote in X.
The visit of the president’s special envoy Donald TrumpSteve Witkoff, A Gaza this Friday, seeks to evaluate the impact of current assistance.
However, The NGO Human Rights Watch criticized the distribution system coordinated by the United States and Israel Through the Humanitarian Foundation for Gaza, qualifying it as a “deadly trap” for Palestinian civilians.
UN denounces humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, Netanyahu denies it while the dead exceed 60 thousand
From the beginning of the war, unleashed by Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, The UN has warned about a “generalized famine” in the Palestinian enclavewhere humanitarian conditions worsen quickly in the absence of access to safe and sustained help.
According to recent data, Israel has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since October 2023 as part of a prolonged genocide that has increased in the last two years, but that has its historical roots in the twentieth century.
Everything is ready to take the A400 plane from Zaragoza from Zaragoza @Ejercitoaire which will send 12 tons of food from @Aecid_es To Gaza, whose launch is planned tomorrow.
Personnel of @Defensagob along with @Maecgob.
The Government of Spain is with Palestine. pic.twitter.com/pfvjuzja7z
– La Moncloa (@DesDelaminoncloa) July 31, 2025
