Ships anchor off coast of Gaza Strip after US military says it has completed pier for delivering aid

(16 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wadi Gaza, Central Gaza Strip - 16 May 2024
1. Various of people looking at ship carrying aid
2. Various of floating pier near the shores of Gaza
3. Person looking at ship
4. Various of ship carrying aid and beach nearby
5. Various of people watching ship
6. Various of ship anchored
STORYLINE:
A ship anchored off the coast of Gaza Strip after US military announced it has completed a floating pier for delivering aid on Thursday.

Officials are poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.

The final, overnight construction sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after U.S. President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing starvation as food and other supplies fail to make it in as Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push on that southern city on the Egyptian border.

Fraught with logistical, weather and security challenges, the maritime route is designed to bolster the amount of aid getting into the Gaza Strip, but it is not considered a substitute for far cheaper land-based deliveries that aid agencies say are much more sustainable.

The boatloads of aid will be deposited at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City and then distributed by aid groups.

Heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants on the outskirts of Rafah has displaced some 600,000 people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, U.N. officials say.

Another 100,000 civilians have fled parts of northern Gaza now that the Israeli military has restarted combat operations there.

The World Food Program will be the U.N. program handling the aid, officials said.

AP video by Abdel Kareem Hana
Production by Wafaa Shurafa

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