The US military finished installing a floating pier for the Gaza Strip on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave, which has suffered ferocious and devastating Israeli bombardment for months.
Separately on Thursday, the Israeli military said that five soldiers had been killed by friendly fire a day earlier in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. Two tanks in the area, which has seen particularly fierce fighting in recent days, opened fire on a house used by the Israeli battalion's deputy commander, the military said.
The final, overnight construction of the pier sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after US President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing starvation.
Food and other supplies are being prevented from entering Gaza as as Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push on that southern city on the Egyptian border.
Israel's attack on Rafah has displaced some 600,000 people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, UN officials say.
More than 1.4 million Palestinians — half of Gaza’s population — have been sheltering in Rafah, most after fleeing Israel’s offensives elsewhere. Another 100,000 civilians have fled parts of northern Gaza now that the Israeli military has restarted attacks there.
