By Lolita C. Baldor, Julia Frankel and Jon Gambrell, Associated PressThis satellite picture taken by Planet Labs PBC shows the construction of a new aid port near Gaza City, Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, April 24, 2024.
Sonali Korde, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, said key agreements for security and handling the aid deliveries are still being negotiated. Those include how Israeli forces will operate in Gaza to ensure that aid workers are not harmed. Aid groups have been shaken by the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in an Israeli airstrike on April 1 as they traveled in clearly marked vehicles on a delivery mission authorized by Israel. The killings have hardened sentiment among some aid groups that the international community should focus instead on pushing Israel to ease obstacles to the delivery of aid on land routes by truck.
— The pallets will be transferred onto trucks, driven onto smaller Army vessels and then taken several miles to the causeway, which will be roughly 1,800 feet, or 550 meters, long and anchored to the shoreline by the Israeli military. The port sits just southwest of Gaza City, a bit north of a road bisecting Gaza that the Israeli military built during the fighting. The area once was the territory’s most-populous region, before the Israeli ground offensive rolled through, pushing over 1 million people south toward the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border.