US Gaza aid pier breaks apart in heavy seas in blow for Joe Biden’s humanitarian plan

The aid pier built by the United States to help ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza broke apart in stormy weather and will be out of action for a week.

The pier, which cost $320 million (£251m), opened just two weeks ago.

Over the next two days, the pier will be pulled from the beach and sent to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod for repair, said Sabrina Singh, a spokesman for the Pentagon.

She said the repair work will take “at least over a week” and then the pier will need to be anchored back into the beach in Gaza.

“From when it was operational, it was working, and we just had sort of an unfortunate confluence of weather storms that made it inoperable for a bit,” Ms Singh said. “Hopefully just a little over a week, we should be back up and running.”

The project, already delayed due to weather conditions, took more than 1,000 US service members to build since it was announced in March.

Since the pier, located north of Rafah in Gaza’s south, became operational, it had transported 137 trucks of aid into the besieged strip, an equivalent of 900 metric tons, according to the UN World Food Programme.

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, praised the “great deal” of aid the pier had managed to facilitate as it was “flowing” into Gaza, where war has left more than a million residents displaced and more than 35,000 Gazans dead, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry.

Mr Miller said: “There has been … a great deal that has been delivered into the north of Gaza over the past weeks, something that happened because of the United States’ intervention.” He admitted, however, that getting aid into the strip’s south, where fighting is escalating in Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold, has been “a real challenge”.

The US has put increasing pressure on Israel to allow aid into the strip amid the war.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has accused Israel of using starvation as a method of warfare and deliberately targeting civilians. Israel says Hamas is using aid trucks to smuggle money and weapons.

The ICC is seeking arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with key figures from Hamas in Gaza and abroad, including leader Yahya Sinwar, military chief Mohammed Deif and political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The US has challenged the ruling, calling it “outrageous” and amid the invasion of Rafah, continues to support Israel’s right to defend itself.