Gaza - US troops on Thursday anchored a long-awaited temporary pier, aimed to boost aid deliveries into besieged Gaza, to a beach in the occupied Palestinian territory, the US military and Israel said.

The US Central Command said the pier was "successfully affixed to the beach in Gaza" at around 7:40 AM, with around 500 tons of aid expected to enter the territory in the coming days.

"It's a pretty substantial amount, and it's spread out over multiple ships right now," Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy CENTCOM commander, told reporters in Washington.

"The connection of the floating pier in the Gaza Strip was successfully completed," Israel's military said in a statement later on Thursday.

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President Joe Biden announced the emergency pier in March to address the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned of famine with virtually the entire population displaced by a relentless Israeli military assault.

The project was built at a cost of at least $320 million.

The humanitarian assistance is being screened in Cyprus and loaded by truck. Once on land, it will "move quickly," being offloaded from the coast into Gaza within hours, Cooper said, adding that "thousands of tons of aid are in the pipeline."

Cooper said that around 1,000 US soldiers and sailors were taking part in the operation but that they were only involved in the pier and not in delivery, which will be handled through the UN.

"There will be no US military boots on the ground in Gaza," he said.

The United Nations has warned of a looming famine in Gaza, where it says the vast majority of the coastal territory's 2.4 million inhabitants have been forcibly displaced since the start of Israel's siege, now in its eighth month.

Israel's military has killed at least 35,272 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in the Gaza Strip.

The UN has argued that opening up land crossing points and allowing more aid trucks into Gaza is necessary to stem the spiraling humanitarian crisis.

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But the primary crossing into Gaza, on the territory's border with Egypt, has been closed for days after Israel seized it last week.

Israeli troops took over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing as the military threatened a wider assault on the southern city, defying warnings from the United States and others over the fate of some 1.4 million civilians who had been sheltering there.

Israeli settlers have also waged attacks on humanitarian aid convoys bound for Gaza.

Cyprus, the Mediterranean island nation that is the departure point for aid on the planned maritime corridor, said US ship James A. Loux left Wednesday, carrying relief supplies and "technical equipment for the unloading and transportation of the aid to the jetty."

Government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said that "new departures are expected, transporting humanitarian aid including food items, medical supplies, hygiene and temporary shelter."

Despite the desperate conditions in Gaza and credible warnings of genocide, the Biden administration continues to send billions of dollars' worth of weapons to Israel. These arms will likely be used to slaughter more Palestinians.

Complicity in genocide is a crime under international law.