US aid efforts in Gaza A temporary pier built by the military The Pentagon said Tuesday that the ship broke apart in rough seas.
The $320 million pier was meant to be a vital supply conduit to deliver aid by sea to starving Palestinians and alleviate the humanitarian disaster — efforts that have now been halted for at least a week.
Defence Ministry deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters that part of the jetty had fallen off on Tuesday morning due to high waves and North African weather.
The pier will be salvaged and sent to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, where it will be repaired by U.S. Central Command (Centcom).
“The reconstruction and repair of the pier will take at least a week and once completed, it will need to be moored again on Gaza’s coast,” Singh said.
“Therefore, once the repairs and reassembly of the pier are complete, we plan to re-anchor the temporary pier to Gaza’s shores and resume humanitarian aid to those most in need.”
The damage is the latest setback for the pier, which opened two weeks ago, and is likely to be denounced by Joe Biden’s critics as a waste of taxpayer money.
Central Command said Saturday that four U.S. warships supporting the pier left their moorings and ran aground in rough seas. Two washed up in the Gaza Strip and two on the Israeli coast 30 miles south of Tel Aviv. One has been recovered and the other three are expected to be refloated within 48 hours, Singh said.
Biden said in March that the pier would be built to ease restrictions imposed by Israel on overland aid shipments to the Gaza Strip, where its blockade has deprived the area’s 2.4 million residents of most clean water, food, medicine and fuel.
Central Command said as of Friday, 1,005 tonnes of aid had been delivered by sea to transfer points on shore, and 903 tonnes had been distributed from the transfer points to U.N. warehouses.
Gaza has been suffering the bloodiest war since it erupted after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians. Israeli retaliatory attacks have left at least 35,800 people dead in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.
