First aid enters Gaza through pier built by US
The first trucks began supplying aid to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip via 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 ongoing, 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 American 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 located about 360 kilometres from Gaza. The shipment includes EU supplies, such as 88,000 cans of food from Romania, the 27-member bloc stated.
The EU welcomed the shipment but called on Israel to “expand deliveries by land and to immediately open additional crossings”.
“It is evident that there is no meaningful substitute to land routes via Egypt and Jordan and entry points from Israel into Gaza for aid delivery at scale,” said its crisis management commissioner, Janez Lenarcic.
The plan to construct the pier was announced by 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.
EU called on Israel to expand deliveries by land
Foreign powers 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.
The UN has repeatedly said overland deliveries are the only way of supplying aid in the volume needed.
In the second such attack this week, the Israeli army said
“dozens of Israeli civilians” set fire to a truck carrying Gazabound 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)