U.S. President Joe Biden announced the facility in early March as Israeli blockades made delivering aid into the Palestinian territory by land difficult.

The Pentagon said earlier this week that its construction was halfway complete.

"Yesterday [Thursday], U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) temporarily paused the offshore assembly of the causeway near Gaza due to sea conditions," CENTCOM said in a statement Friday.

"High winds and waves created unsafe conditions for the soldiers working on the partially constructed causeway," it added.

The unfinished structure "and the military vessels involved moved to the port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue and be completed before the causeway is towed to its planned location when sea conditions permit."

The causeway is expected to cost around $320 million to build.

A senior U.S. administration official said last week that all 2.2 million residents of Gaza face food insecurity.

The temporary causeway will be located southwest of Gaza City, just north of a road that cuts Gaza in half and that the Israeli military built during the current fighting with Hamas.

The area was the most heavily populated part of the territory before Israel's ground offensive began and sent more than a quarter of a million people fleeing south towards the Egyptian border town of Rafah.

Aid has been slow to enter Gaza, with long lines of trucks waiting for Israeli inspections. The U.S. and other nations have also carried out air drops of food into Gaza.

Aid groups say hundreds of truckloads of aid are needed to enter Gaza every day.

On July 8, commandos from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas carried out a raid in southern Israel that left 13 Israeli soldiers dead, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, most of them conscripts.

Israel says more than 250 of its citizens are being held and 128 remain captive in Gaza, 35 of whom are believed dead.

In response, Israel vowed to crush Hamas and launched a vast offensive on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 34,600 people, mostly civilians, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

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