WASHINGTON – The U.S. military-built pier, designed to transport badly needed aid to Gaza by boat, has been reconnected to the beach in the besieged territory after it was destroyed by storms and rough seas, and food and other supplies will soon begin flowing, the US Central Command. announced Friday.
The section that connects to the beach in Gaza, the sidewalk, was rebuilt almost two weeks later strong storms damaged it and abruptly halted what was already a problematic delivery route.
“Early this morning in Gaza, U.S. forces successfully annexed the temporary pier to Gaza beach,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters by phone Friday. . “We hope to resume the delivery of humanitarian assistance by sea in the coming days.”
Cooper said operations at the reconnected pier will soon be ramped up with the goal of getting 1 million pounds (450,000 kilograms) of food and other supplies transported through the pier to Gaza every two days.
A large section of the bridge collapsed on May 25 when strong winds and high seas hit the area, and four Army ships operating there ran aground, injuring three soldiers, including one who remains in critical condition. The damage was the latest obstacle in what has been a persistent struggle to get food to hungry Palestinians during almost 8 months of age Israel-Hamas War.
Bad weather had delayed the delivery of pier sections and U.S. military personnel from Virginia to the region. And early efforts to bring aid from the docks to Gaza were halted when residents stormed the trucks that aid agencies were using to transport food to warehouses for distribution.
The sea route, for a limited period, was an additional way to help get more aid to Gaza because the Israeli offensive on the southern city of Rafah has made it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve anything via land routes that are much more productive. President Joe Biden’s administration has said from the beginning that the pier was not meant to be a total solution and that any amount of aid helps.
Because of storm damage to the bridge, large sections were disconnected and moved to the Israeli port for repairs.
Two of the US Army boats ran aground near Ashkelon, Israel, but were freed and the other two ran aground off the coast of Gaza. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the two took a lot of water and sand and that the Israeli Navy has been helping with repairs.
Biden, a Democrat, announced his plan for the US military to build a pier during his State of the Union address in early March, and the military said it would take about 60 days to get it up and running. The initial cost was estimated at $320 million, but Singh said earlier this week that the price had dropped to $230 million, due to contributions from Britain and because the cost of hiring trucks and other equipment was lower than expected. .
The installation took a little longer than the planned two months, with the first trucks transporting aid to the Gaza Strip rolling along the pier on May 17th. Just a day later, mobs stormed a convoy of trucks as they headed toward Gaza, removing cargo from 11 of the 16 vehicles before arriving at a UN warehouse.
The next day, as authorities changed train travel routes, aid finally began to reach people in need. More than 1,100 tons (1,000 metric tons) of aid were delivered before the bridge failed in the storm, Pentagon officials said.
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