US President Joe Biden on Friday announced plans for a military airdrop of food and supplies, a day after the deaths of dozens of Palestinians.

“We need to do more and the United States will do more,” Biden told reporters, adding that “aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough”.

At the White House, spokesperson John Kirby stressed that airdrops would become “a sustained effort.” He added that the first airdrop would be likely be military MREs, or “meals ready-to-eat.”

Biden told reporters that the US was also looking at the possibility of a maritime corridor to deliver large amounts of aid into Gaza.

Gaza health authorities said Israeli forces had killed more than 100 people trying to reach a relief convoy near Gaza City early on Thursday, as Palestinians face an increasingly desperate situation nearly five months into the war that began with a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

Gaza’s health ministry called Thursday’s incident a “massacre” and said 115 people were killed and over 750 wounded.

A UN team that visited some of the wounded in Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital on Friday saw a “large number of gunshot wounds”, UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said.

The hospital received 70 of the dead and treated more than 700 wounded, of whom around 200 were still there during the team’s visit, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

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“I’m not aware that our team examined the bodies of people who were killed. My understanding from what they saw in terms of the patients who were alive getting treatments is that there was a large number of gunshot wounds,” he said.

Hossam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza City’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, said all the casualties admitted there were hit by “bullets and shrapnel from occupation forces”.

Israel blamed most of the deaths on crowds that swarmed around aid trucks, saying victims had been trampled or run over.

Israeli armed forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said troops had fired “a few warning shots” to try to disperse a “mob” that had “ambushed” the aid trucks.

“Thousands of Gazans” swarmed the trucks, “violently pushing and even trampling other Gazans to death, looting the humanitarian supplies”, he said.

With people eating animal feed and even cactuses to survive, and with doctors saying children are dying in hospitals from malnutrition and dehydration, the UN has said it faces “overwhelming obstacles” getting in aid.

While it is unclear which type of aircraft will be used, the C-17 and C-130 are best suited for the job.

David Deptula, a retired US Air Force three-star general who once commanded the no-fly zone over northern Iraq, said airdrops are something the US military can effectively execute.

“It is something that’s right up their mission alley,” Deptula said. “There are a lot of detailed challenges. But there’s nothing insurmountable.”

Still, there have been questions about the effectiveness of air dropping aid into Gaza.

A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the airdrops would have only a limited impact on the suffering of those in Gaza.

“It doesn’t deal with the root cause,” the official said, adding that ultimately only opening up land borders could deal with the issue in a serious manner.

Another issue, the official added, was that the US could not ensure that the aid simply did not end up in Hamas’ hands, given that the United States did not have troops on the ground.

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“Humanitarian workers always complain that airdrops are good photo opportunities but a lousy way to deliver aid,” Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s UN Director, said. Gowan said that the only way to get enough aid was through aid convoys which would follow a truce.

“It is arguable that the situation in Gaza is now so bad that any additional supplies will at least alleviate some suffering. But this at best a temporary [band]aid measure,” Gowan added.

Under pressure at home and abroad, another US official said the Biden administration was looking at shipping aid by sea from Cyprus, some 210 nautical miles off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.

At the White House, Kirby acknowledged that the airdrops into Gaza were “extremely difficult” because of the dense population and ongoing conflict.

It was unclear if Biden’s announcement was coordinated with Israel. “We are aware of the humanitarian airdrop,” an Israeli official in Washington said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not reply to a question on whether the US had sought Israeli agreement in advance on the air drops or was coordinating the effort with it.

The UN delivered aid to besieged northern Gaza for the first time in over a week on Friday, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The UN delivered medicines, vaccines and fuel to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

The World Food Programme said 10 days ago that it was pausing deliveries of food aid to northern Gaza until conditions in the Palestinian enclave allow for safe distribution.

The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said on Friday that during February an average of nearly 97 trucks were able to enter Gaza each day, compared with about 150 trucks a day in January, adding: “The number of trucks entering Gaza remains well below the target of 500 per day.”

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that the wartime death toll in the Palestinian territory had reached 30,320. Most of the victims are women and children.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse