Images show the US military building a floating pier to aid Gaza

The US military has published photos of a floating pier being built in the Mediterranean Sea to help increase the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Logistics ships and personnel can be seen assembling the pier from steel segments, next to a US Navy ship.

The pier and a dike attached to the shore will cost about $320 million and should be operational within a week.

The aim is to deliver aid worth as much as two million meals a day to Gaza to help prevent famine there.

A UN-backed study last month found that 1.1 million people were facing catastrophic hunger and that famine was imminent in northern Gaza in May.

“Right now you’re going to see the construction of that floating temporary pier, and then you’re going to see the construction of the causeway,” Defense Department spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington on Monday.

“Eventually, that causeway… will be pushed into the coastline and secured by the (Israeli armed forces),” she added.

The pier will be ready in a week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

The UN has said that a maritime corridor can never replace land delivery, and that land routes are the only way to get the bulk of needed supplies.

Satellite images published by Planet Labs, meanwhile, appeared to show that the pier was being built next to the USNS Benavidez, a Military Sealift Command roll-on/roll-off ship, 11 km northwest of the North Gaza coast.

A senior US military official said last week that the Israeli military’s security role meant there “will be no US boots on the ground” as part of the mission to establish what is officially known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS , build and operate. .

An unnamed “third party” would also drive emergency trucks across the causeway, the official added.

Hundreds of sailors and soldiers involved in the operation will live and sleep aboard a Royal Navy logistics support ship, RFA Cardigan Bay, deployed to the area.

On Saturday, the IDF confirmed that the Israeli Navy would “secure the forces” operating the pier and said it was “committed to increasing the amount of humanitarian aid transferred to Gaza on a daily basis.”

A senior Hamas official told the Associated Press last week that the group – which has been designated a terrorist organization by Israel and the US – rejects “any non-Palestinian presence in Gaza, both at sea and on land” and “any military force which is present in these places… as an occupying force”.

He spoke a day after Israel said “terrorists” fired mortars at the site during a visit by UN staff. No injuries have been reported.

The IDF also released photos and videos of what it described as the “extensive preparations” being carried out by its forces on a 0.27-square-kilometer holding area where aid will be brought from the floating pier.

The site is just inland from the makeshift jetty built in March by US charity World Central Kitchen for a maritime corridor that was suspended after seven of its aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The U.S. military official said the floating pier should initially be able to handle about 90 truckloads of aid per day, then quickly scale up to about 150 truckloads. A truck can usually transport about 20 tons of goods.

The UN has blamed the severe food shortage on Israeli restrictions on supplies, continued hostilities and the breakdown of order.

On Friday, the UN said an average of 192 aid trucks entered Gaza daily in April through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, located in southern Gaza. The figure does not include the two recently opened Israeli-controlled entry points in central and northern Gaza.

Israel’s Defense Ministry’s Cogat said that in the week of April 7, an average of 350 trucks entered Gaza daily through all border crossings.

It has insisted that Israel not restrict aid deliveries and has accused the UN of failing to distribute them to those in need in Gaza.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed around 1,200 people and took 253 others hostage.

More than 34,500 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.