A second boat loaded with humanitarian aid is ready for an imminent departure from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip after the arrival of 200 tonnes of food aboard an NGO ship on Friday, Cypriot authorities said on Saturday. The spokesperson for the Cypriot Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Theodoros Gotsis, indicated on Saturday on public radio that this ship called “Jennifer” was ready to leave “today (Saturday) or tomorrow (Sunday)” for the Gaza Strip .
A second boat loaded with “240 tons” of food
The UN fears widespread famine in this besieged Palestinian territory, the scene for more than five months of war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. The boat will use the maritime humanitarian corridor opened from the Cypriot port of Larnaca and used for the first time by the ship of the Spanish NGO Open Arms which towed a barge of 200 tonnes of food provided by the American NGO World Central Kitchen.
World Central Kitchen said in a statement on Saturday morning that all the cargo was unloaded via a temporary jetty built southwest of Gaza City and then transported by 12 trucks before being distributed. This NGO of the Spanish-American chef José Andrés also said it was loading the second boat with “240 tons” of food: rice, flour, oil, canned proteins and vegetables as well as dates, a product traditionally consumed during the Ramadan. The Open Arms ship has returned to Larnaca, where it should arrive on Sunday, said the spokesperson for the NGO, which plans to participate in other missions to Gaza.
In a message published on X, José Andrés welcomed the sending of this first boat. “We succeeded! (…) It was a test (…) We can bring thousands of tonnes (of aid) every week,” he assured. Confirming the return of the “first boat” and the imminent sending of a second, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told the press on Saturday that he had received “calls from many countries” wishing to help send aid to Gaza.
A maritime humanitarian corridor opened from Cyprus
These aid shipments by sea are intended in particular for the north of the Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation is particularly catastrophic. They are inspected on departure from Larnaca by the Israeli army which indicated on Friday that it had also deployed troops “to secure the area” at the time of unloading the cargo from the Open Arms. This maritime humanitarian corridor was opened from Cyprus, the closest EU country to the Gaza Strip, to address the humanitarian emergency in the Gaza Strip and the insufficient aid arriving by land .
Four American army boats left the United States this week with around 100 soldiers and the equipment necessary to build a pier and a dock in Gaza to land the aid which will take 60 days. The international community and NGOs, however, emphasize that this maritime corridor and aid airdrops cannot replace land routes.
The war in the Gaza Strip was sparked by the unprecedented attack on October 7 by Hamas commandos in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count made from official Israeli data. The Israeli military operation launched in retaliation has so far left more than 31,500 dead in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas.