Martin Griffiths, the former under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator at the UN, has described aid drops as “a last resort”.

“They have lots of risks,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We’ve seen it happen already in this week of airdrops in Gaza; people hurt, wounded, killed on the ground because of the drops,” Griffiths said, adding there is “no system on the ground to … prevent looting and [to] get it to the right people”, he said.

Aid agencies have criticised air drops as ineffective and symbolic.

A plane load can typically only carry a quarter of an average truck’s capacity of 40 tonnes per load.