This file photo provided by U.S. Central Command shows U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary Brigade), U.S. Navy sailors assigned assigned to the 1st Amphibious Construction Battalion and the Israel Defense Forces located Trident Dock on the Gaza Strip coast on May 16, 2024.
AP/US Central Command
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AP/US Central Command
WASHINGTON – A U.S. military-built dock designed to carry much-needed aid to Gaza by boat has been reconnected to the beach in the besieged territory after a section broke off due to storms and seas are rough, and food and other supplies will soon begin arriving, U.S. Central Command announced Friday.
The stretch to the beach in Gaza, the causeway, has been rebuilt nearly two weeks after heavy storms damaged it and abruptly halted an already troubled delivery route.
“Early this morning in Gaza, U.S. forces successfully attached a temporary dock to the beach,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters by phone Friday. Gaza Sea”. “We hope to continue providing humanitarian assistance from the sea in the coming days.”
Cooper said operations at the reconnected dock will soon be ramped up with the goal of getting 1 million pounds (500 tons or 450 tons) of food and other supplies moving through the dock into Gaza every two weeks. once a day.
The dock was operational for only a week before a storm caused it to break and initially struggled to meet delivery targets. Weather was a factor and initial efforts to get aid from the dock into Gaza were disrupted when civilians in need of food stormed the trucks aid agencies were using to transport the food to the warehouse for distribution.
However, before it broke, the dock gradually increased its aid operations each day. Cooper said Friday that lessons learned from that first week of operations left him confident that higher levels of aid throughout could now be achieved.
The US Agency for International Development said in a statement that it is working with other US government colleagues and humanitarian partners on the ground in Gaza to ensure that aid from the dock “ can continue to operate safely and effectively, which we look forward to in the coming days.”
A large section of the causeway collapsed on May 25 when high winds and rough seas flooded the area, and four military vessels operating there ran aground, injuring three service members, including one is still in critical condition. The damage is the latest setback in the persistent struggle to get food to starving Palestinians during the eight-month Israel-Hamas war.
The limited-time maritime route is an additional way to help get more aid into Gaza as Israel’s attack on the southern city of Rafah has made it difficult, if not impossible, to get aid into Gaza. Move anything over long distances over land routes. more productive. Rafah military operations and Israeli military strikes in northern Gaza have also temporarily halted US food drops.
The United States is also expected to continue those airdrops in the coming days, Cooper said Friday.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said from the start that the dock is not a total solution and that any aid would help.
After the May 25 storm damaged the causeway, large sections were disconnected and shipped to Israeli ports for repairs. Additionally, two of the U.S. Army ships that ran aground in similar bad weather near Ashkelon in Israel were also freed.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said two other military ships anchored on the Gaza coast were flooded with a lot of water and sand and the Israeli Navy was assisting with repairs.
Biden, a Democrat, announced plans to ask the U.S. military to build a dock during his State of the Union address in early March, and the military said it would take about 60 days for it to be completed. installed and operated. The cost was initially estimated at $320 million, but earlier this week Singh said the price had been reduced to $230 million due to British contributions and because the cost of contracting trucks and other equipment was lower than expected.
The installation took a little longer than the expected two months, when the first trucks carrying aid to the Gaza Strip rolled down the dock on May 17. Just a day later, crowds overran a convoy of trucks as they entered Gaza, stripping the trucks of goods from 11 of the 16 vehicles before they reached the United Nations warehouse.
The next day, as officials rerouted the convoys, aid finally began to reach those in need. Pentagon officials said more than 1,100 tons of aid was delivered before the causeway breached during the storm.
