GAZA CITY, Palestine

An American military ship has anchored off the Gaza Strip, sources reported on Friday.

“A US Navy ship docked Thursday night several nautical miles off the coast of the Gaza Valley area in the central Gaza Strip,” an Anadolu correspondent reported.

The ship is expected to participate in the construction work of a floating naval dock that Washington had announced in March.

The floating dock is aimed at providing humanitarian aid by sea to the strip, according to previous US statements.

On March 10, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced sending the first ship to the eastern Mediterranean to provide humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip by sea.

Earlier, US President Joe Biden had said his country would build a temporary pier on the coast of the Gaza Strip to deliver more humanitarian aid.

Another part of the concrete pier starting from the shore of the southernmost area of Gaza City is under construction with the aim of complementing the American pier which will be constructed during the next two months.

According to local Palestinian sources, the pier is being built on the Gaza coast using the rubble of homes destroyed by Israel during the war that has been going on for more than half a year.

Since March 15, two aid ships have arrived off the coast of Gaza from Southern Cyprus where their cargo was unloaded via buoys that transported the boxes to the concrete dock.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than 34,300 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 77,300 others injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi