US soldier dies of injuries sustained during Gaza aid mission in May

(JNS) — An American soldier who was critically hurt six months ago while on the Biden administration’s Gaza-aid pier mission died of his injuries last week, the U.S. military announced on Monday.

Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley, 23, served in the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia and was injured in a non-combat incident on May 23. He died on Oct. 31.

The fallen soldier “was injured while supporting the mission that delivered humanitarian aid to Gaza in May 2024 and was receiving treatment in a long-term care medical center,” Capt. Shkeila Milford-Glover, a spokesman for the Army, said in a statement cited by CNN.

Stanley “was an instrumental and well respected first line leader,” added Col. John “Eddie” Gray, commander of the unit, “especially during the mission to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.”

“We will continue to provide support to his family during this difficult time. Our entire unit mourns alongside his family,” Gray concluded.

It remains unclear how Stanley was injured, though officials have said that the incident took place out on a ship. Two other troops sustained minor injuries in the incident and immediately returned to duty.

Announced by President Joe Biden at his State of the Union address in March, the $230 million floating dock was intended to increase the flow of humanitarian aid via a sea route from Cyprus. However, the project was plagued with problems after the pier became operational on May 7.

In the first week of operations, some three-fourths of the humanitarian aid transported from the dock was stolen by unspecified Palestinian actors while en route to a United Nations warehouse.

Over the summer, a U.S. Agency for International Development internal watchdog noted that the agency tasked with coordinating the pier, also called the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, had pushed back on the idea.

Problems during the mission, primarily caused by rough seas and bad weather, rendered the pier inoperable for large stretches of time, the USAID report noted. The JLOTS dock operated for only 20 days before being closed on July 17, bringing in enough food for some 450,000 Palestinians. Both figures fell well short of the project’s stated goals.

Two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in June while securing the humanitarian-aid pier, an Israeli source deployed to Gaza told JNS in July. On June 15, IDF tanks based at a makeshift military outpost set up near the pier ran over a large IED some 400 meters north of it, killing two soldiers and wounding two others, according to the military source.

“What led me to talk is really just the frustration towards the end of the last few weeks. It’s a very unsafe operation; anything could happen,” the source claimed. “They [the U.S.] could have delivered the aid through any land port and finished within a week, but for whatever publicity reason, they built the pier. Then they failed and tried to cover it up.

“When the pier broke the first time, it was a lot more dangerous than they made it sound. It sounded like they were on top of things, but Israel had to fix it all for them,” he said. “Everything they tried to accomplish, whether it was a defensive operation or daily operations, nothing went without a hitch.”