The Jordanian armed forces announced on Monday that they had launched a series of humanitarian aid, food and other supplies drops “directly to the population” in the besieged Gaza Strip, with the participation of a French air force transport.

The Jordanian armed forces carried out “four airdrops of aid to the population in Gaza” on the orders of King Abdullah II, according to a statement.

The operation was intended to “distribute aid directly to the population and drop it along the shores of the Gaza Strip, from north to south,” the statement said.

It was, according to the text, among other things, ready meals of “high nutritional value”, in order to “relieve the suffering of the population in the Gaza Strip”.

The drops were carried out by “four C-130 aircraft”, one of which “belongs to the French armed forces”.

The French Foreign Ministry, in a separate statement, confirmed the participation of an aircraft of the French armed forces in the operation, specifying that “2.2 tons” of aid, in particular “packages of food and hygiene kits” were dropped from a French transport, inside “special containers equipped with parachutes”.

Jordan and France last month conducted the first such joint operation.

The Jordanian armed forces have carried out sixteen operations to drop humanitarian and medical supplies since the Israel/Hamas war broke out in the Gaza Strip on October 7, targeting in particular the Jordanian field hospital in the northern part of the small Palestinian enclave.

The humanitarian situation continues to worsen in the Gaza Strip, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warning on Saturday against the threat of “mass starvation” due to insufficient distribution of food and drinking water.

Paris recalled in its statement that as “increasing numbers of civilians die of hunger and disease” it is “urgent and imperative to open the port of Ashdod” in Israel, as well as “all crossing points” and to create a “land corridor from Jordan’ which can be an effective means for the ‘effective’ delivery of ‘massive’ humanitarian aid.

The non-governmental organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel on Monday of continuing to restrict the passage of humanitarian aid, despite the order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of the United Nations in The Hague to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip.

In November, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that humanitarian aid drops from Jordan were coordinated with the Israeli armed forces.