This handout satellite image courtesy of Maxar Technologies taken on April 26, 2024 shows the USNS Roy P. Benavidez ship and sections of a floating pier, offshore the Palestinian Gaza Strip. US forces were expected to complete a floating pier on Gaza’s coast later this week, allowing more aid deliveries into the besieged Palestinian territory, the president of Cyprus said on April 30, 2024. Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON — The temporary pier being constructed by the US military to increase humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza is more than halfway complete, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
The start of construction was announced on April 25, and US officials say the pier will be operational sometime early this month.
“As of today, we are over 50 percent complete on setting up the pier,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists.
READ: US military ships working to build $320 million pier for Gaza aid
Plans for the pier — which the Pentagon said earlier this week will cost at least $320 million — were first announced by US President Joe Biden in early March as Israel held up deliveries of assistance by ground.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza — which has been devastated by more than six months of Israeli operations against Hamas — remains dire, with a senior US administration official saying last week that the territory’s entire population of 2.2 million people is facing food insecurity.
READ: US dispatches aid ship to Gaza after Biden vows to build pier
Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,568 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.