Aid supplies were being delivered to the Gaza Strip from a repaired US-built pier after continued problems delivering supplies by sea to the Palestinians, a US official said on Saturday.
The pier, built by the US military, was in operation for just over a week before it was blown away by strong winds and rough seas on May 25. The damaged section was repaired at an Israeli port and then reconnected to the Gaza Strip coast on Friday.
Ahead of the official announcement of the shipment, U.S. officials said crews transported about 492 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip via the docks on Saturday.
This was the same day that Israel launched heavy air and ground strikes to rescue four hostages held by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war in Gaza. Gaza health officials said at least 210 Palestinians, including children, were killed.
This image provided by the U.S. military shows trucks being unloaded from the original pier. (Staff Sgt. Malcolm Cohens Ashley/U.S. Army/Associated Press)
This restores another avenue for delivering badly needed food and other emergency supplies to Palestinians trapped in the eight-month-old war between Israel and Hamas.
Fighting and Israeli restrictions on land crossings have severely limited the flow of food and other vital supplies into the region.
Initial efforts to deliver aid from the jetty to the Gaza Strip were hampered when crowds overran convoys of trucks aid agencies were using to transport food, stealing many of the trucks' cargo before they could reach U.N. warehouses. Authorities responded by rerouting deliveries, and aid began reaching those in need.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters on Friday that lessons learned during the first week of operations gave him confidence more aid could be delivered.
Relief agencies are pressuring Israel to reopen a land route that can bring in all the needed aid.
UN agencies have warned that more than one million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip could be pushed into unprecedented levels of hunger by the middle of next month if the fighting continues.
President Joe Biden announced plans to have the U.S. military build the pier during his State of the Union address in early March, saying the military would have it up and running in about 60 days. It took a little longer than planned, with the first trucks carrying aid for Gaza not arriving at the pier until May 17.
The cost was originally estimated at $320 million (£251 million), but the Ministry of Defence said last week that the price had been reduced to $230 million (£180 million) due to a British donation and lower than expected contract costs for trucks and other equipment.
