US aid pier removed due to high seas as Israeli strikes rock north Gaza
GAZA STRIP
A temporary U.S. aid pier has again been removed from the Gaza coast due to high seas and will be towed to an Israeli port, the Pentagon said on Friday as Israel's military said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in northern Gaza.
It is the third time the pier has been detached from the shore because of weather conditions since its initial installation in mid-May, and the effort is also facing difficulties with distribution of assistance once it reaches Gaza.
"Due to high sea states expected this weekend, Central Command has removed the temporary pier from its anchored position in Gaza and will tow it back to Ashdod, Israel," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists, referring to the military command responsible for the Middle East.
She said she does not have a date for the pier's reinstallation, and that "the commander will continue to assess the sea states over the weekend."
The pier was first anchored to the Gaza coast in mid-May, but was damaged by bad weather later in the month 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 is now being repeated.
When the pier has been operational, it has been used to deliver a large amount of aid to the shore.
"Since May 17, Central Command has assisted in the delivery of more than 8,831 metric tons, or approximately 19.4 million pounds, of humanitarian aid to the shore for onward distribution by humanitarian organizations," Singh said.
But distribution has been a problem, with the U.N. World Food Program suspending its deliveries of assistance that arrive via the pier earlier this month to assess the security situation.
The move came after Israel conducted a military operation nearby that freed four hostages, but which Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry said killed more than 270 Palestinians.
As a result, aid is piling up in the marshalling yard where it is delivered onshore.
"There's still some room there, but it's, I would say majority is pretty full right now," Singh said.
Gaza is suffering through a war which broke out after Hamas's unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Hamas also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,765 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Gaza.
Northern Gaza strikes
The operation in Shujaiya, on the edge of Gaza City, caused numerous casualties, witnesses and medics said on Thursday when it began.
Renewed fighting in Gaza's north followed comments on Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said the "intense phase" of the war was winding down after almost nine months.
Experts say they foresee a potentially prolonged next phase.
In a statement, Israel's military said that, overnight Thursday, troops "started to conduct targeted raids" in the Shujaiya area as part of an operation that began earlier in the day.
As troops went in, warplanes struck dozens of Hamas targets, it said, following other "significant" strikes that killed "dozens" of militants in the north.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, said on Friday it was fighting in the northern Gaza neighbourhood of Shujaiya and had targeted Israeli troops with mortar shells.
Hamas's own armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, also said it was engaged in fighting in Shujaiya and that there were "dead and wounded" Israeli troops.
Meanwhile, Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli forces had targeted the agency's headquarters while advancing in western Rafah.
Multiple agency staff were wounded, while two fire engines, an ambulance and an excavator used for rescuing people from under rubble were damaged, one of the agency's officials Mohammad al-Mughair told AFP.
On Thursday, a military spokesman told residents and displaced Gazans in a social media message to leave "for your safety".
They were asked to head south, to a declared "humanitarian zone" about 25 kilometers (15 miles) away.
An AFP photographer saw many Palestinians leaving on foot, carrying their belongings through rubble-strewn streets.
The U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that "about 60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced" from the area overnight Wednesday to Thursday.
Hamas said Israeli forces were "starting a ground incursion", reporting "several" dead as "thousands flee under relentless bombing".
On Friday the military announced the death of another soldier, aged 19, during combat in southern Gaza. This brings to 314 the number killed since ground operations began in the territory.
Elsewhere in the coastal strip, paramedics on Friday reported three people killed in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
AFP images showed the municipal building had been destroyed.
Colleagues prayed over the bodies of four civil defense volunteers killed during bombardment of the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp, other AFP images showed.
Orange work vests lay on top of their white-shrouded bodies.
Witnesses on Friday reported artillery fire in Nuseirat.
'Milestone'
Fighting in Gaza comes alongside growing fears of a wider regional conflagration involving Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement. The two sides have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.
Such exchanges have escalated this month.
On Friday, Hezbollah said it had launched multiple attacks on Israeli military positions and troops said that one of its fighters had been killed by Israeli fire.
Lebanon's official National News Agency reported three people, including two Palestinians, had been killed in an Israeli strike on a building in the border village of Kfar Kila.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said three drones and "around 25 launches" were identified crossing from Lebanon. The military said it responded with artillery fire.
In Gaza, most of the population has been uprooted and much of the territory's infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving residents struggling to survive.
A U.N.-backed assessment this week said almost half a million people in Gaza are experiencing "catastrophic" hunger.
An Israeli government spokesman dismissed the report, partly because "it's based upon data from Hamas's own health institutions".
But the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, on its website, says it was created "precisely to supersede potential political interferences through technical neutrality", and that its parameters are based on international standards.
The medical situation also remains critical, with the World Health Organisation reporting on Friday that 32 hospitals in the Gaza Strip had been damaged during the war, while only two hospitals in the Gaza governorate, which includes Gaza City, are undamaged.