RAFAH (Palestinian Territories): The first trucks began supplying aid to war-ravaged Gaza from a temporary pier on Friday, the US military said, as fighting raged in the Palestinian territory.
US Central Command said “trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore” via the long-awaited pier, a day after it was anchored to a Gaza beach.
“This is an on-going, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor that is entirely humanitarian in nature,” it said.
The US military issued pictures showing aid being lifted onto a barge in the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod, adding on social media platform X that no US troops went ashore.
In the coming days, Central Command says, around 500 tonnes of aid is expected to be brought via the pier to Gaza, where the United Nations has warned of a looming famine.
The aid is being transported from Cyprus, the European Union’s easternmost member, about 360 kilometres from Gaza. The shipment includes EU supplies including 88,000 cans of food from Romania, the 27-member bloc said.
The EU welcomed the shipment but called on Israel to “expand deliveries by land and to immediately open additional crossings”. The UN has said repeatedly that overland deliveries are the only way of supplying aid in the volume needed.
But it welcomed the deliveries on Friday and said it had agreed to support the distribution of aid into Gaza from the floating dock.
The plan to construct the pier was announced by US President Joe Biden in March, as Israel held up deliveries of aid on the ground, worsening Gaza’s dire humanitarian situation.
But aid deliveries have become increasingly complicated as the needs of Gazans grow.
Arab and Western governments ramped up airdrops of aid, but several people have been killed by falling crates or stampedes or drowned trying to retrieve packages from the Mediterranean.
And in the second such attack this week, the Israeli army said “dozens of Israeli civilians” set fire to a truck carrying Gaza-bound aid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday night.
Media outlets said Israeli settlers were behind the attack.
It came after right-wing activists ransacked at least seven Gaza-bound aid trucks from Jordan near the Tarqumya crossing with the West Bank on Monday. – AFP
