4 Army boats with steel, equipment on way to Gaza to build temporary port

The U.S. Army has sent four Army boats loaded with equipment toward the eastern Mediterranean Sea as Washington plans to construct a port off the coast of Gaza to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the territory.

The 7th Transportation Brigade Army ships James A. Loux, Monterrey, Matamoros and Wilson Warf left Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia on Tuesday evening carrying equipment and supplies to construct the pier, according to U.S. Central Command.

The four Army ships follow a logistics support vessel that left Sunday for Gaza carrying the first batch of equipment.

The pier will take 1,000 troops to build and is not expected to be operational for two months, but it will be able to facilitate the delivery of up to 2 million meals a day, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday.

The U.S. is not expected to put any boots on the ground with the pier. Instead, troops will work closely with partnering groups to get aid into Gaza. The aid is expected to flow from the island of Cyprus toward Gaza. A charity ship carrying 200 metric tons of food began an initial delivery down the Cyprus-Gaza corridor for the first time this week.

Israel’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza has stretched the territory thin as the United Nations warns of a potential famine. Only limited amounts of aid are coming into the strip through land crossings.

The U.S. began airdropping humanitarian aid into Gaza this week to alleviate the situation, though critics say the efforts to bring in more assistance through airdrops and the sea will only put a bandage on a mounting crisis.

“It’s highly appreciated,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN’s aid office, in comments shared by the organization. “But it’s not a substitute for the overland transport of food and other emergency aid into Gaza and particularly northern Gaza. It cannot make up for that.”

Ryder said Tuesday the U.S. has so far airdropped 204,000 meals, 48,000 bottles of water, and more than 5,000 pounds of food items.

Ryder told reporters the maritime pier, the airdrops and efforts to open more land crossings into Gaza are all part of a broad effort to get more aid into the coastal strip.

“This is just part of a bigger effort, an international effort to get aid into Gaza,” he said. “We will continue to do our part as the Department of Defense, again, cognizant of the fact that this is not just us. There is a much broader effort.”

More than 30,000 people have died in Gaza as Israeli forces battle Hamas across the strip in retaliation for an Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,100 people and saw the kidnapping of another roughly 250 hostages in southern Israel, about 100 of whom are believed to still be alive in Gaza and held by Hamas.

Israel is also warning that it will next move into Rafah, the southern Gaza city that is facilitating the most humanitarian aid into the strip.

More than a million Palestinians are sheltering there. President Biden has raised concerns about Israeli forces moving into the city without a plan to evacuate civilians, creating a rift in recent days with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he must move into Rafah to destroy Hamas.