American military personnel will be stationed on a British support ship to build the dock in Gaza

 

A British support ship has sailed from Cyprus carrying hundreds of American soldiers who will participate in the construction of a naval pier in Gaza to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, a military source said Saturday.

The U.S. Department of Defense (Pentagon) said that construction of the dock began on Thursday and is expected to be operational "by early May."

According to the United States, the operational capacity of this platform will initially be 90 trucks of aid per day, then 150 trucks per day. The aid will first arrive in Cyprus, where it will be vetted and then prepared for transfer to Gaza.

British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said in a statement that the crew of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary's (RFA) support vessel Cardigan Bay played an "essential" role in the UK's contribution to increasing the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The United Nations and international non-governmental organizations confirm that initiatives of this kind cannot replace a significant increase in the entry of humanitarian aid by land into the besieged Strip, where more than two million people are at risk of starvation, given the severe shortage of medical equipment and the fact that most health facilities are operating at capacity. The service is the result of more than six months of war between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).

The war in Gaza erupted after an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on official Israeli figures.

A massive Israeli military operation in response to the attack caused a humanitarian catastrophe, leaving more than 34,000 dead in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas health ministry.