(CNN) — President Joe Biden plans to announce Friday that the US will airdrop humanitarian aid and supplies into Gaza, according to people familiar with the plans.
A White House official told CNN earlier on Friday that Biden plans to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the efforts that the US is making to address the dire situation that civilians are confronting there.
Those comments are expected to come when Biden speaks ahead of his meeting with the Italian prime minister in the Oval Office Friday, according to that official.
The US military is working to carry out the airdrops in the coming days, a US official told CNN.
The use of airdrops is not a sustainable solution for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as the method can only bring in a fraction of the amount of aid that could be transported into the enclave by trucks.
Instead, their use underscores the devastating impact of the Israeli government’s ongoing refusal to open more land crossings for the critically needed aid.
The US calls for the Netanyahu government to open more crossings in the north have thus far failed.
In the south, the number of trucks entering the war-torn strip trickled to just 85 per day last week.
“Those would help immediately,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday when asked by CNN about the potential for carrying out airdrops.
“But the real solution here to this is to try to get – or to get, I should say – an agreement that would dramatically increase the flow of assistance in and help with the distribution problems and help with the problem that civilians face of being able to move safely to get to aid when it actually does make it in,” Miller said at a department briefing.
Earlier this week, Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, Qatar and France airdropped relief aid in various areas in the Gaza Strip in a sign of how desperate the situation has become.
Senior US officials have repeatedly pressed Israeli officials in face-to-face meetings on the urgent need to open additional crossings.
“This is a matter of life and death,” said USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who met on Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
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By Kevin Liptak and Jennifer Hansler, CNN
CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed reporting.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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