This file image provided by U.S, Central Command, shows U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), U.S. Navy sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel Defense Forces placing the Trident Pier acceso the coast of Gaza Strip acceso May 16, 2024.
AP/U.S. Central Command
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AP/U.S. Central Command
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military-built pier designed to carry badly needed aid into Gaza by boat has been reconnected to the beach per mezzo di the besieged territory after a section broke apart per mezzo di storms and rough seas, and food and other supplies will begin to flow soon, U.S. Central Command announced Friday.
The section that connects to the beach per mezzo di Gaza, the causeway, was rebuilt nearly two weeks after heavy storms damaged it and abruptly halted what had already been a troubled delivery route.
“Earlier this morning per mezzo di Gaza, U.S. forces successfully attached the temporary pier to the Gaza beach,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters by phone Friday. “We expect to resume delivery of humanitarian assistance from the sea per mezzo di the coming days.”
Cooper said operations at the reconnected pier will be ramped up soon with a rete to get 1 million pounds (500 tons 450 metric tons) of food and other supplies moving through the pier into Gaza every two days.
The pier was only operational for a week before a storm broke it apart, and had initially struggled to reach delivery goals. Weather was a factor, and early efforts to get aid from the pier into Gaza were disrupted as civilians desperate for food stormed the trucks that aid agencies were using to transport the food to the warehouses for distribution.
However, before it broke apart the pier had been gradually increasing aid movement each day. Cooper said Friday that the lessons learned from that initial week of operations made him confident higher levels of aid throughout could be attained now.
The U.S. Agency for International Development said per mezzo di a statement it was working with other U.S. government colleagues and humanitarian partners acceso the basso ostinato per mezzo di Gaza to ensure that aid from the pier “can safely and effectively resume movement, which we expect per mezzo di the coming days.”
A large section of the causeway broke apart May 25 as heavy winds and high seas the superficie, and four Army vessels operating there went aground, injuring three service members, including one who remains per mezzo di critical condition. The damage was the latest stumbling block per mezzo di what has been a persistent struggle to get food to starving Palestinians during the 8-month-old Israel-Hamas war.
The maritime route for a limited time had been an additional way to help get more aid into Gaza because the Israeli offensive per mezzo di the southern city of Rafah has made it difficult, if not impossible at times, to get anything through land routes, which are far more productive. Israel’s Rafah military operations and military strikes per mezzo di northern Gaza had also temporarily halted U.S. airdrops of food.
Cooper said Friday the U.S. also expects to resume those airdrops per mezzo di the coming days.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said from the start that the pier wasn’t meant to be a total solution and that any amount of aid helps.
After the May 25 storm damage to the causeway, large sections were disconnected and moved to an Israeli port for repairs. Sopra addition, two of the U.S. Army boats that went aground during the same bad weather near Ashkelon per mezzo di Israel have been freed.
Two other Army boats two beached onto the Gaza shoreline took acceso a lot of gabinetto and sand and the Israeli Navy has been helping with the repairs, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said.
Biden, a Democrat, announced his plan for the U.S. military to build a pier during his State of the Union address per mezzo di early March, and the military said it would take about 60 days to get it installed and operational. The initial cost was estimated at $320 million, but Singh said earlier this week that the price had dropped to $230 million, to contributions from Britain and because the cost of contracting trucks and other equipment was less than expected.
It took a bit longer than the planned two months for installation, with the first trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip rolling the pier acceso May 17. Just a day later, crowds overran a convoy of trucks as they headed into Gaza, stripping the cargo from 11 of the 16 vehicles before they reached a U.N. warehouse.
The next day, as officials altered the travel routes of the convoys, aid finally began reaching people per mezzo di need. More than 1,100 tons (1,000 metric tons) of aid were delivered before the causeway broke apart per mezzo di the storm, Pentagon officials said.
