PENTAGON — The U.S. military says a temporary pier to deliver aid into the Gaza Strip by sea has been reconnected to the beach after it broke apart in a storm in late May.
Food and other supplies will begin to flow into Gaza “as soon as possible … in the coming days,” U.S. Central Command’s deputy chief, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, told reporters on Friday.
“Earlier this morning in Gaza, U.S. forces successfully attached the temporary pier to the Gaza beach,” he said, adding that the military continued its “no U.S. boots on the ground’ policy through support from Israel Defense Force engineers.
In response to a question from VOA, Cooper said that the aid was already “on scene,” but that security measures were still being checked before the flow of aid could restart.
“There’s a whole series of measures on force protection that we want to validate to make sure we have all the communications in place so that we can move successfully. We’re validating all those with a strong sense of urgency,” he said.
Cooper said operations at the reconnected pier will ramp up with a goal to get about 227,000 kilograms (500,000 pounds) of food and other supplies into Gaza via the pier each day.
The U.S. military also intends to simultaneously deliver aid into Gaza via air drops, according to CENTCOM’s deputy chief.
A large section of the causeway was broken by heavy winds and rough seas on May 25, which Cooper said was “unanticipated.” Four U.S. military vessels helping with the mission went aground, injuring three service members, including one who remains in critical condition.
Large sections of the pier were disconnected and moved to an Israeli port for repairs.
U.S. Senator Richard Wicker, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “It is astonishing that President [Joe] Biden is doubling down on this bad idea. It continues to put U.S. troops in harm’s way without any plan for ensuring that aid is delivered successfully to Gazans in need. This needs to end immediately.”
The United Nations oversees receiving shipments and coordinating distribution on the ground. The arrangement is part of an effort to boost what humanitarian organizations say is a vastly insufficient amount of aid for Palestinian civilians.
Aid has been slow to get into Gaza due to long backups of vehicles at Israeli inspection points and ongoing Israeli military operations against Hamas. The United States and other nations have air dropped food into Gaza dozens of times in recent months, but air drops are much less efficient and provide vastly smaller quantities of aid than distribution via sea or land.
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