WASHINGTON: Badly needed aid has been delivered into Gaza from a newly repaired American-built pier, a US official said Saturday, following problems that had plagued the effort to bring supplies to Palestinians by sea.
The pier constructed by the American military was only operational for about a week before it was blown apart in high winds and heavy seas on May 25. The damaged section was reconnected to the beach in Gaza on Friday after undergoing repairs at an Israeli port.
Crews delivered about 1.1 million pounds (492 metric tons) of humanitarian aid to Gaza via the pier on Saturday, the US official said. They spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement of the delivery.
It came the same day that Israel mounted a heavy air and ground assault that rescued four hostages, who had been taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 assault that launched the war in Gaza. At least 210 Palestinians, including children, were killed, a Gaza health official said.
It brings back online one way to get desperately needed food and other emergency supplies to Palestinians trapped by the eight-month-old Israel-Hamas war. Israeli restrictions on land crossings, and fighting, have greatly limited the flow of food and other vital supplies into the territory.
The damage to the pier was the latest stumbling block for the project and the persistent struggle to get food to starving Palestinians. Three US service members were injured, one critically, and four vessels were beached due to heavy seas.
Early efforts to get aid from the pier into the Gaza Strip were disrupted as crowds overran a convoy of trucks that aid agencies were using to transport the food, stripping the cargo from many of them before they could reach a UN warehouse. Officials responded by altering the travel routes, and aid began reaching those in need.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of US Central Command, told reporters on Friday that the lessons learned from that initial week of operations made him confident greater amounts of aid could be delivered now.
He said the goal was to get to 1 million pounds (500 tons or 450 metric tons) of food and other supplies moving through the pier into Gaza every two days. Before the causeway broke apart in the storm, more than 1,100 tons (1,000 metric tons) of aid were delivered, Pentagon officials said.
The US Agency for International Development is working with the UN World Food Program and their humanitarian partners working in Gaza to distribute food, high-nutrition emergency treatment for starving children, and other aid via the sea route.
Relief agencies have pressed Israel to reopen land routes that could bring in all the needed aid. Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter through a southern checkpoint and pointed the finger at the UN for not distributing aid. The UN says it is often unable to retrieve the aid because of the security situation.
UN agencies have warned that over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by the middle of next month if hostilities continue.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said from the start that the pier wasn’t meant to be a total solution and that any amount of aid helps.
Biden, a Democrat, announced his plan for the US military to build a pier during his State of the Union address in early March, and the military said it would take about 60 days to get it installed and operational. It took a bit longer than planned, with the first trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip rolling down the pier on May 17.
The initial cost was estimated at $320 million, but the Pentagon said this past week that the price had dropped to $230 million, due to contributions from Britain and because the cost of contracting trucks and other equipment was less than expected.
Aid delivery to Gaza resumes through rebuilt pier
https://arab.news/rw2bf
Aid delivery to Gaza resumes through rebuilt pier
- Israeli restrictions on land crossings, and fighting, have greatly limited the flow of food and other vital supplies into the territory
Israeli strike hits north Lebanon as raids pummel Beirut suburbs
- Israeli strike hits Tripoli in north Lebanon, source says
- More nightly raids hit Beirut’s southern suburbs
The source told Reuters a Hamas official, his wife and two children were killed in the strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli. Hamas-affiliated media said the strike killed a leader of the group’s armed wing.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni-majority port city.
Israel has sharply expanded its strikes on Lebanon in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Lebanon’s Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah. Fighting had been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Hamas.
Israel has been carrying out nightly bombardment of Beirut’s once densely populated southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah. Overnight, a military spokesman issued three alerts for residents there to evacuate, and Reuters witnesses then heard at least one blast.
On Friday, Israel said it had targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in the southern suburbs and was assessing the damage after a series of strikes on senior figures in the group.
Israel has eliminated much of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an air attack on Sept. 27.
Lebanon’s government says more than 2,000 people have been killed there in the past year, most in the past two weeks. Strikes on medical teams and facilities, including the Lebanese Red Cross, Lebanese public hospitals and rescue workers affiliated to Hezbollah, have also increased.
Lebanon’s government says more than 1.2 million Lebanese have been forced from their homes, and the United Nations says most displacement shelters in the country are full. Many had gone north to Tripoli or to neighboring Syria, but an Israeli strike on Friday closed the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called the toll on Lebanese civilians “totally unacceptable.”
Iran defiant, Israel weighs options
Israel has been weighing options in its response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Tuesday.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies, also backed by Tehran, in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a rare appearance leading Friday prayers, told a huge crowd in Tehran that Iran and its regional allies would not back down.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi landed in Syria on Saturday for talks after a visit to Lebanon, in which he reiterated support for Lebanon and Hezbollah.
In Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, many buildings have been reduced to rubble. “We’re alive but don’t know for how long,” said Nouhad Chaib, a 40-year-old man already displaced from the south.
On Friday, Hezbollah fired more than 200 rockets into Israel, according to the Israeli military, and air raid sirens continued to sound in its north on Saturday.
The latest bloodletting in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered by the Palestinian Hamas group’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly all of Gaza’s population.
Ground operations
The Lebanese government has accused Israel of targeting civilians, pointing to dozens of women and children killed. It has not broken its total death toll down between civilians and Hezbollah fighters.
Israel says it targets military capabilities and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. It accuses Hezbollah and Hamas of hiding among civilians, which they deny.
Israel, which began ground operations targeting southern Lebanon this week, says they are focussed on villages near the border and has said Beirut “was not on the table,” but has not specified how long the ground incursion would last.
It says the operations aim to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments, which began on Oct. 8, 2023, forced them to evacuate from its north.
Iran’s missile salvo was partly in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Nasrallah, a dominant figure who had turned the group into a powerful armed and political force with reach across the Middle East.
Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying that Hashem Safieddine, rumored to be Nasrallah’s successor, had been targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut on Thursday night, but his fate was not clear.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted a photo of Safieddine and Nasrallah on X on Saturday and urged Khamenei to “take your proxies and leave Lebanon.”
Hamas says Israel Lebanon strike kills commander, family
- Hamas has announced the deaths of at least 18 of its militants in Lebanon
BEIRUT: Palestinian militant group Hamas said an Israeli strike killed one of its commanders in a refugee camp in north Lebanon Saturday, the first time the area had been hit since the start of the Gaza war.
“Commander” Saeed Attallah Ali, his wife and two daughters were killed in “Zionist bombardment of his house in the Beddawi camp” near the northern city of Tripoli, it said.
Israel has repeatedly targeted Hamas officials in Lebanon since the Gaza war erupted almost a year ago.
Hamas has announced the deaths of at least 18 of its militants in Lebanon since then.
The group said an air strike on Monday killed its leader in Lebanon Fatah Sharif Abu Al-Amine in his home in the Al-Bass camp in south Lebanon.
In August, an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the south Lebanon city of Sidon killed Hamas commander Samer Al-Hajj.
A strike in January, which a US defense official said was carried out by Israel, killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh Al-Aruri and six other militants in Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold.
Lebanon’s dozen Palestinian refugee camps were created for those who were driven out or fled during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army stays out of the camps and leaves the Palestinian factions to handle security.
UN says Lebanon peacekeepers ‘remain in all positions’ despite Israel request
- ‘Peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly’
LEBANON: The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Saturday it would not leave positions in the country’s south despite what it said was an Israeli request to “relocate.”
“On September 30, the IDF (Israeli military) notified UNIFIL of their intention to undertake limited ground incursions into Lebanon. They also requested we relocate from some of our positions,” the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said in a statement, adding that “peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly.”
More than 200 Chinese citizens evacuated from Lebanon, foreign ministry says
- The move comes after conflict in the Middle East has intensified following Iran’s missile strike on Israel
- A South Korean military transport aircraft also flies out 97 nationals out of Lebanon
BEIJING: More than 200 Chinese citizens have been safely evacuated from Lebanon, China’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.
“These people, who have been evacuated in two batches, include three Hong Kong residents and one Taiwan compatriot,” the ministry said in a statement in response to a Reuters query on the situation.
“The Chinese Embassy in Lebanon remains firm in Lebanon and continues to assist Chinese citizens remaining there in taking security measures,” it added.
The move comes after conflict in the Middle East has intensified following Iran’s missile strike on Israel on Tuesday and Israel’s incursion into Lebanon.
On Wednesday, China’s official Xinhua news agency said more than 200 Chinese citizens had been safely evacuated from Lebanon by the government.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said three Taiwanese in Lebanon were expected to return to the island this month and that two others had opted to stay for family reasons.
The ministry added that another Taiwanese decided late last month to take a boat out of the country arranged by China, and that the de facto Taiwan embassy in Jordan was aware of that process. It did not elaborate.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and considers the island’s people to be Chinese citizens, a position the government in Taipei strongly objects to.
A South Korean military transport aircraft returned 97 citizens and family members from Lebanon on Saturday as Middle East tensions rise, the foreign ministry said.
A KC-330 aircraft left Beirut on Friday afternoon with the evacuees, who include Lebanese family members, and arrived at a military airfield on the south of Seoul, the ministry said.
President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday ordered military aircraft to be deployed to evacuate South Korean citizens from parts of the Middle East as conflict escalates between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as the armed group’s backer, Iran.
South Korea’s defense ministry said it flew a C130J transport plane as backup, which is capable of operating on shorter runways and under fire, as a precaution, and sent 39 military personnel, including mechanics and diplomats.
The government will take further actions to ensure the safety of its citizens, the foreign ministry said without elaborating.
South Korean diplomats stationed in Lebanon remained in the country, Yonhap news agency reported.
Hospital in southern Lebanon says it was shelled after being warned to evacuate
BEIRUT — A hospital in southern Lebanon said in a statement that it had been shelled by Israeli forces Friday after being warned to evacuate.
The statement from Salah Ghandour Hospital in the town of Bint Jbeil said the shelling “resulted in nine members of the medical and nursing staff being injured, most of them seriously,” while most of the medical staff were evacuated.
A day earlier, the World Health Organization says 28 health workers in Lebanon had been killed in the past 24 hours.
Earlier on Friday, the Israel military in a statement alleged that rescue vehicles were being used by Hezbollah to transport militants and weapons.
