Three US soldiers assigned to the Gaza Pier mission were injured on Thursday, including one whose injuries were serious enough to require a medical evacuation to Israel, according to the Pentagon.
The injuries mark the first incidents of their kind among US military personnel in the operation to bring humanitarian assistance to Palestinians via a pier off the coast of Gaza.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters Thursday that the three service members suffered non-combat-related incidents at sea.
“Three injured, two were very minor injuries and those individuals returned to work. One individual is being treated at a local Israeli hospital,” Cooper said during a news conference Thursday, adding that the two with minor injuries suffered a sprained ankle and a back injury and both returned to work.
The third individual was injured on a ship at sea and medically evacuated, Cooper noted.
Defense officials later told USNI News that the most seriously injured soldier was working on the staging platform off the coast of Gaza at the time of the injury. Reuters report the individual was in critical condition.
The US military earlier this month completed a pier off the coast of Gaza as part of a maritime corridor to deliver aid to the beleaguered territory. The corridor begins in Cyprus, which receives aid from international humanitarian groups and donor countries that can be sent to a US-built floating dock 3 km off the coast of Gaza.
From there, the ships unload the assistance onto trucks that board US Army vessels and sail to a pier anchored on the Gaza beach. Aid workers then take the aid for distribution on the ground in Gaza, without US troops on the ground.
In the first week of using the pier, the US delivered more than 1.2 million pounds of aid to the Palestinians, according to US officials, although it was stressed that the maritime corridor is not a sufficient substitute for land crossings and will not fulfill the “astonishing needs” in Gaza.
The pier also had several complications, including delays in its connection to the coast due to bad weather. And at least one truck was looted and a Hamas drone attack kilometers away from the pier led to the aid convoy’s movements being frozen.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
