OAN’s Brooke Mallory
11:26 AM – Wednesday, May 29, 2024
On Tuesday, severe weather reportedly caused the temporary “floating pier” off the shore of Gaza to collapse, forcing the United States to halt assistance deliveries.
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Earlier this week, four vessels that had helped stabilize the pier broke off due to rough seas. Nonetheless, authorities claimed afterwards that the pier was still in use. However, as of Tuesday, that is no longer the case, according to officials who spoke with Fox News Digital.
United States officials did not provide an estimated time frame for repairs. Although, NBC News reported that a U.N. official who reached out to reporters claimed that the repairs would require a minimum of one week to complete.
The enormous floating dock was built at a whopping cost of about $320 million, funded by President Biden’s administration and U.S. taxpayers.
It had only been in use for about a week when the damage happened.
Two of the four stabilizing boats that broke away earlier this week drifted north and came ashore on a beach in Ashdod, Israel, while the other two are still anchored at the beach next to the pier.
“While the pier has been used to transfer roughly 569 metric tons of aid into Gaza, none of that aid had been delivered to Palestinians as of last week, the Pentagon confirmed,” according to Fox News.
The collapse of the pier coincides with Israel carrying out an operation in Rafah, where tanks are rolling into the city center for the first time since the start of the war.
Meanwhile, witnesses told Reuters that they saw the remote-operated armored vehicles close to the Al-Awda mosque, a prominent landmark in Rafah.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers stated that they are still conducting operations in the Rafah neighborhood of the city, but they did not address whether their soldiers had entered the city center.
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