The damage is the latest setback for the pier, which opened two weeks ago.
Washington:
The US military has suspended aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip by sea, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, after its temporary dock was damaged by bad weather.
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters that high seas and a weather system off North Africa caused a section of the pier to break loose on Tuesday morning.
“The reconstruction and repair of the pier will take at least more than a week, and upon completion it will have to be anchored again off the coast of Gaza,” she said.
“Thus, after the completion of the repair and reassembly of the pier, the intention is to re-anchor the temporary pier on the Gaza coast and resume humanitarian aid to the people who need it most.”
The damage is the latest setback for the pier, which opened two weeks ago.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Saturday that four US Army ships supporting the pier broke free from their moorings and ran aground in rough seas.
Two ran aground in Gaza, while the other two washed up on the coast of Israel, 50 kilometers south of Tel Aviv. One was recovered and the other three will be brought back within 48 hours, Singh said.
Gaza is suffering the bloodiest war ever, which broke out after Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report using official data. .
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,800 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory.
Israel imposed a siege on Gaza that deprived the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants of most of their drinking water, food, medicine and fuel.
US President Joe Biden said in March that the pier would be built to ease restrictions imposed by Israel on the delivery of aid by land to Gaza.
CENTCOM said 1,005 metric tons of aid had been delivered from the sea to the beach transfer point by Friday, with 903 tons distributed from the transfer point to the UN warehouse.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
This story originally appeared on Ndtv.com read the full story
