FAST DOWNLOAD
President Joe Biden is to announce that the US military will construct a port in Gaza to get more humanitarian aid into the territory by sea, senior US officials say.
The temporary port will increase the amount of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians by “hundreds of additional truckloads” per day, officials say.
However it will not include US troops on the ground in Gaza, they said.
The UN warns that a quarter of the population is on the brink of famine.
The port will take “a number of weeks” to set up, the officials said, and be able to receive large ships carrying food, water medicine, and temporary shelters. Initial shipments will arrive via Cyprus, where Israeli security inspections will take place.
Mr Biden is due to make the announcement during his State of the Union address later.
Israel’s military launched an air and ground campaign in Gaza after Hamas’s attacks on Israel on 7 October, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 253 others were taken hostage.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry says.
In his speech to Congress, President Biden will say the US military is to establish a port in Gaza, involving a temporary pier to transport supplies from ships at sea to the shore.
It is not clear who will build the causeway or secure the aid on land, meaning crucial questions about whether the operation can succeed remain unanswered.
Gaza has no deep water port and so the US has for weeks been looking at ways to get shiploads of aid in urgently, while the administration has publicly ramped up its pressure and increasingly shown in public its impatience with Israel over the desperate situation on the ground.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this week that children were dying of starvation in northern Gaza.
Last week, amid the growing desperation, more than 100 people were killed trying to reach an aid convoy..
Palestinians said most were shot by Israeli troops. The Israeli military, which was overseeing the private aid deliveries, said most were killed in a stampede.
