Verifying claims Spain sent humanitarian aid in bad condition to Gaza

A video spreading virally online shows a young Palestinian opening a bag of aid allegedly air-dropped into the Gaza Strip.

It contains sachets of supplies covered in mould.

The Palestinian in the video says that the bag was parachuted into the Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah areas, and was being sold “in the markets” for the equivalent of $100 (around €85).

“Can you see? There is mould,” he explains, showing sachets covered in a dark substance. “Look how aid with mould is reaching us.”

The packet carries the branding of JOMIPSA, an Alicante-based company that provides food rations and humanitarian aid kits to customers including European governments and the NATO alliance.

Photographs of food packs on the JOMIPSA website match those seen in the viral video, which Euroverify detected on X, Instagram, TikTok and Telegram.

The video was first published on 2 August, a day after Spain, along with France, Germany, the UAE and Jordan, air-dropped humanitarian supplies into Gaza in response to the humanitarian crisis gripping the enclave.

Spain provided 12 tonnes of aid, dropped using 24 parachutes. This included 5,500 food rations designed to feed 11,000 people.

Online users have assumed that the bag in question was air-dropped as part of the aid rations donated by the Spanish government.

Euroverify put the claims made by the Palestinian in the video to the Spanish foreign affairs ministry. It firmly rejected what it described as “false information”.

“We categorically deny that, under any circumstances, content was sent in a bad condition,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry adds that it’s impossible to verify the origin of a package without the batch number, but that the Spanish company in question, JOMIPSA, had also sold supplies to other donor countries.

Palestinians say aid is being sold at markets

Several Spanish media, including news agency EFE, have also received pictures from Palestinians on the ground in Gaza claiming to show the aid packets being sold at markets.

They say the bags were being sold for 350 shekels (around €90) on the markets.

Testimonies shared with EFE match the Palestinian’s account in the video, both in terms of the contents of the bags, namely 24 sachets of foodstuff including biscuits and coffee, as well as the location where the parachutes fell.

Images obtained by Catalan newspaper Diari ARA show bags matching those in the video being sold at a Gaza market.

The director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said in a statement after the parachutes were dropped that such methods are “at least 100 times more costly than trucks”.

“If there is political will to allow airdrops – which are highly costly, insufficient and Inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,” he added.

Spain’s foreign minister José Manuel Albares described the aid parachuted into the Strip as a “drop in the ocean” and called for aid to be allowed to enter in a “regular, sufficient and safe way”.

Madrid rejects allegations that pork product was included in food aid

Other online users have claimed that the aid bags dropped into Gaza, whose population is predominantly Muslim, contained pork.

Some users have shared a screenshot from JOMIPSA’s website in which the contents of one of the available aid packs is listed as including “pork meatballs”.

But there is no evidence that these food rations were included in the packs sent to Gaza, and the Spanish foreign ministry has firmly denied the allegations, saying all meals sent to civilians in Gaza were halal.