Aid deliveries destined to boost emergency humanitarian aid to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory have begun through a temporary pier in Gaza, the US military said.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement, adding that no US troops went ashore:
Today at approximately 9 a.m. (Gaza time), trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore via a temporary pier in Gaza. This is an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor that is entirely humanitarian in nature, and will involve aid commodities donated by a number of countries and humanitarian organizations.
US troops on Thursday anchored a long-awaited temporary pier on a beach in the besieged Palestinian territory designed to boost aid deliveries to war-torn Gaza, the U.S. and Israeli militaries said.
About 500 tonnes of supplies will arrive in the Palestinian territory in the coming days, CENTCOM officials also said. Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy CENTCOM commander, told reporters in Washington:
It’s a pretty substantial amount, and it’s spread out over multiple ships right now.
Creating a pier for the aid delivery to Gaza
Earleir, UN warned that virtually the entire population displaced by Israeli military action in response to the 7 October Hamas attack is starving. President Joe Biden announced in March the creation of an emergency pier to address the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. US authorities have spent about $320 million to build a pier for Gaza.
First the humanitarian aid will be checked and then lorries will take it to Cyprus. Once it arrives on land, it will “move quickly” and reach Gaza within hours, Cooper said, adding that “thousands of tonnes of aid are on the way.”
About 1,000 US soldiers and sailors engaged in the operation, he said, but they are only taking part in the work on the pier and not in the delivery, which the UN will handle. He also added:
There will be no US military boots on the ground in Gaza.
Israel’s military retaliation has killed at least 35,272 people, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
The UN has argued that opening up land crossing points and allowing more aid trucks into Gaza is the only way to stem the spiralling humanitarian crisis. But the primary crossing into Gaza, on the territory’s border with Egypt, had not worked for days after Israel seized it from Hamas last week.
