Aid deliveries using the temporary aid pier built by the U.S. were suspended after it sustained damage due to bad weather on Tuesday, the Pentagon said.
"The rebuilding and repairing of the pier will take at least over a week," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters. "Upon completion of the pier repair and reassembly, the intention is to re-anchor the temporary pier to the coast of Gaza and resume humanitarian aid to the people who need it most."
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday that over the next two days, the pier will be pulled out and sent to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, where U.S. Central Command will repair it. She says the fixes will take "at least over a week" and then the pier will need to be anchored back into the beach in Gaza.
The pier is one of the few ways that food, water and other supplies are getting to Palestinians who the U.N. says are on the brink of famine amid the nearly eight-month-old Israeli war on Gaza and the country's ruthless blockade.
The setback is the latest for the $320 million pier, which has already had three U.S. service member injuries and had four of its vessels beached due to heavy seas. Deliveries also were halted for two days last week after crowds rushed aid trucks coming from the pier and one Palestinian man was shot dead. The U.S. military worked with the U.N. and Israeli officials to select safer alternate routes for trucks, the Pentagon said Friday.
The pier was fully functional as late as Saturday when heavy seas unmoored four of the Army boats that were being used to ferry pallets of aid from commercial vessels to the pier, which was anchored into the beach and provided a long causeway for trucks to drive that aid onto the shore.
Two of the vessels were beached on Gaza and two others on the coast of Israel near Ashkelon.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that had not yet been announced publicly.
U.S. officials have repeatedly emphasized that the pier cannot provide the amount of aid that starving Gazans need and said that more checkpoints for humanitarian trucks need to be opened.
At maximum capacity, the pier would bring in enough food for 500,000 of Gaza's people. U.S. officials stressed the need for open land crossings for the remaining 1.8 million.
The U.S. has also planned to continue to provide airdrops of food, which likewise cannot meet all the needs.
Deepening Israeli attacks on the southern city of Rafah have made it impossible for aid shipments to get through the crossing there, which is a key source for fuel and food coming into Gaza. Israel says it is bringing aid in through another border crossing, Kerem Shalom, but humanitarian organizations say Israeli military operations make it difficult for them to retrieve the aid there for distribution. IDF is notorious for targeting humanitarian aid organizations, aid distribution centers, aid workers, bakeries, safe zones, hospitals, houses of worship and all civilian infrastructure.
