Humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip must be doubled to prevent a worsening food crisis affecting more than 2 million people, Jordan’s King Abdullah said today.

The international community must put more pressure on Israel to ease restrictions on aid entering the Palestinian enclave, the Jordanian monarch also told USAID chief Samantha Power, who was visiting the country, according to state media.

Jordan is asking Western countries to pressure Israel to increase the amount of aid entering the Gaza Strip from the kingdom through Kerem Shalom on the Egypt-Israel-Gaza border, beyond the existing Rafah border crossing, officials said. .

Israel says it is not blocking aid and attributes any delays to problems on the part of the Palestinians and the UN.

King Abdullah also visited a military air base to attend the departure of 7 C-130 military transport aircraft, three from Jordan and the rest from Egypt, Qatar, France and the United Arab Emirates, which will drop packages from the air with food along the Gaza coast for a second day.

Jordan, which has been transformed by UN and Western donors into a regional hub for the supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza, airdropped food for the first time yesterday, Monday, along with the French military, to thousands of displaced people in the Palestinian enclave who have find shelter on the beach. The aid was dropped in four flights.

Previous aid packages of medicine and humanitarian supplies airdropped were destined for hospitals run by the Jordanian army in Gaza.