The Pentagon said Tuesday that U.S. soldiers had been stuck on three Army boats beached in Gaza over the weekend after high seas and a storm broke apart an aid pier the service built to deliver food to starving Palestinians.
U.S. Central Command confirmed that the soldiers had been evacuated from the boats by Tuesday after the vessels broke free from their moorings on Saturday, though it was not immediately clear how long the troops were stuck on the shore. The update immediately followed earlier information released by the Pentagon that the soldiers were still aboard the grounded boats.
Along with the beachings of the Army boats, the storm also battered and broke apart the aid pier — a Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, operation by the Army — leaving the future of the key U.S. humanitarian effort uncertain. The pier was set up to move hundreds of metric tons of aid to the area amid a brutal, monthslong Israeli offensive against Hamas.
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The boat groundings and destruction are the latest trouble for the pier and could disrupt the U.S. effort for at least a week, according to the Pentagon.
“The Israeli navy will be helping push those vessels back, and hopefully they’ll be fully operational,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Tuesday, noting that one ship should be recovered in the next day and the other two in the next 48…
