US declares end to troubled Gaza aid pier mission
US military's problem-plagued mission to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza via a temporary pier has ended, with deliveries shifting to an Israeli port, a senior American officer said Wednesday.
US President Joe Biden has expressed disappointment in the performance of the pier, which has repeatedly broken free of the shore because of bad weather since its initial installation in mid-May, limiting the time it has been operational.
«The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete, so there's no more need to use the pier,» Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told journalists. «It's now transitioning… to a port in Ashdod, Israel,» which «offers a more sustainable path.»
Deliveries from Cyprus to Ashdod, and then on to northern Gaza, have already begun, with more than a million pounds of aid moving via that route in recent weeks, said Cooper, the deputy head of the US Central Command.
He hailed the temporary pier effort — via which nearly 20 million pounds of aid arrived during the roughly 20 days it was operational — as a «historically unprecedented operation to deliver aid into an active combat zone without any US boots on the ground.»
But the project — which Cooper said cost less than a previous estimate of $230 million, though a final figure is not yet available — has faced repeated issues starting in May, when the pier was damaged by bad weather and had to be removed for repairs.
It was then reattached on June 7, but was moved to Ashdod on June 14 to protect it from anticipated high seas — a situation that
