The U.S. military has finished installing a floating pier for the Gaza Strip. Officials said Thursday that they are poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war. The final, overnight construction sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after U.S. President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing starvation as food and other supplies fail to make it in. Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push on that southern city on the Egyptian border, complicating those shipments. American officials insist U.S. troops will not set foot in Gaza, though they acknowledge the danger of operating near the war zone.

The U.S. military has finished installing a floating pier for delivering humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, besieged after seven months of fighting in the Israel-Hamas war. Israel has been pressing its military operations in Rafah, a city along Gaza’s southern border, and in northern Gaza, where Hamas has regrouped. Some 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes, many of them multiple times. No food has entered the two main border crossings in southern Gaza for more than a week. Some 1.1 million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation. Israel has portrayed Rafah as the last Hamas stronghold, brushing off warnings that any major operation there would be catastrophic for civilians.

U.S. officials say the number of reported sexual assaults across the military decreased last year. A confidential survey also found a 19% drop in the number of service members who said they had experienced some type of unwanted sexual contact. Both are dramatic reversals of what has been a growing problem in recent years. Officials told The Associated Press that more than 29,000 active-duty service members said in the survey that they had unwanted sexual contact during the previous year, compared with nearly 36,000 in 2021. It's the first decrease in eight years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report hasn't been publicly released.