The US Central Command (Centcom) announced on Monday that it had “temporarily” stopped delivering aid to Gaza via the floating dock, while the government media office in the Strip accused Israel of using the floating dock for “security and military missions.”
Centcom said, in a statement, “The operations of the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) have continued without interruption since the re-anchoring of the floating dock off the coast of the Strip on June 19. Today, operations on the dock will temporarily stop to conduct maintenance activities as scheduled.”
The statement stated that, “During last weekend, the US Central Command delivered 1,384 metric tons of aid to Gaza via the dock,” and noted, “More than 6,206 metric tons of humanitarian aid were delivered to Gaza via the floating dock, since it began operating in May 17 last year.
On March 8, US President Joe Biden announced the decision to establish a temporary naval pier, claiming that it would be used to deliver food and aid to the Palestinians, in light of the severe Israeli restrictions on the arrival of aid from land crossings.
For its part, the government media office in the Gaza Strip accused Israel of using the American floating dock on the Gaza coast to “prepare and launch to carry out security and military missions.” The director of the office, Ismail Al-Thawabta, said during a press conference on Monday that among these tasks was “committing the crime of the Nuseirat camp massacre (carried out by Israel on June 8, during which 274 Palestinians were killed).”
He explained, "This pier had a major military and security role in this horrific massacre," stressing that the pier "did not provide 1% of the food needs of the people of the Gaza Strip."
On June 10, the Pentagon denied that Israel used the floating dock during its operation to liberate 4 of its prisoners in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, a claim rejected by the authorities in the Gaza Strip.
Very unusual!
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