A new sea route for aid to Gaza is on track, USAID says. Treating hungry children is a priority

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States hopes to have arrangements in place on the ground in Gaza so aid workers can begin delivering food, treatment to starving children and other emergency aid by early to mid-month, when the U.S. military plans to complete a floating jetty for the aid, a U.S. Agency for International Development official said.

But aid arriving via the new US-led sea route will only serve a fraction – half a million people – of those who need aid in Gaza, USAID official stressed to the Associated Press. These are some of the agency’s first comments on the status of preparations for the Biden administration’s $320 million Gaza Pier project, for which USAID is helping coordinate security and distribution on the ground.

Meanwhile, at a factory in southern Georgia, USAID Administrator Samantha Power is expected to announce later Friday a $200 million investment to accelerate U.S. production of emergency nutritional treatments for children under-fives starving as conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti and elsewhere intensify. the need.

USAID made one of the officials working on humanitarian operations in Gaza available for an interview ahead of Power’s announcement, on the condition that the official not be identified, citing security concerns given the work of this person in conflicts.

As the war between Israel and Hamas drags on for nearly seven months and Israel restricts humanitarian aid, half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are at imminent risk of starvation, international officials say. health. Under pressure from the United States and others, Israeli officials in recent weeks began slowly reopening some border crossings to relief shipments.

Children under 5 are among the first to die when wars, droughts or other disasters reduce food supplies. Hospital officials in northern Gaza reported the first deaths from hunger in early March and said most of the dead were children.

USAID is coordinating with the United Nations World Food Program, Israel and others for security and distribution of the pier project, while U.S. military forces finish building it for aid deliveries by boat. President Joe Biden, under pressure to do more to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the United States provides military support to Israel, announced the pier project in early March.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement Friday that offshore assembly of the floating pier was temporarily suspended due to high winds and swells, which created dangerous conditions for soldiers. The partially constructed jetty and the military vessels involved have proceeded to the port of Ashdod and will continue work there.

A U.S. official said high seas would delay the installation for several days, possibly until next week. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation, said the pause could last longer if bad weather persists, as military personnel and divers must gear up. water to carry out part of the final installation.

The United Nations has remained mum on its role in delivering aid.

“We want to see more ground operations. “This is a maritime operation,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Wednesday. “We work with them, but obviously we have certain parameters that must be respected, including the fundamental humanitarian principles that we have, which is independence and freedom of all kinds. military.”

Difficulties in delivering first aid through a recently reopened land corridor to northern Gaza on Wednesday highlighted the uncertainty over security and the danger still facing aid workers. Israeli settlers blocked the convoy before it crossed, then Hamas militants hijacked a World Food Program truck inside Gaza before it reached its destination.

The power was at a plant in Fitzgerald, Ga., one of only two in the United States that makes nutrient-rich dough. The ready-to-use therapeutic food, known as RUTF, is designed as a life-saving treatment to be administered in a controlled clinical setting to hungry children under 5 years of age.

In Gaza, this paste is most needed in the northern part of the Palestinian territory. Civilians have been cut off from most humanitarian supplies, bombarded by Israeli airstrikes and driven into hiding by the fighting.

Rates of acute malnutrition among children under 5 rose from 1 percent before the war to 30 percent five months later, the USAID official said. According to the official, this is the fastest rise in hunger in recent history, more than during the severe conflicts and food shortages in Somalia or South Sudan.

One of the few medical facilities still operational in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital, is under siege by parents who bring in thousands of malnourished children for treatment, the official said. Humanitarian officials say many other starving children remain invisible and in need, with families unable to help them pass through fighting and checkpoints to get care.

Saving severely malnourished children in particular requires both a huge increase in aid deliveries and a lasting calm in the fighting, the official said, so that aid workers can set up treatment facilities around the territory and families can safely bring children for the necessary long-term treatment.

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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.