Aid ship prepares to set to sail from Cyprus to Gaza through new corridor
A US charity says it is loading aid for Gaza onto a boat in Cyprus, preparing for the first shipment to the war-ravaged territory along the new maritime corridor the EU hopes will open this weekend. The Spanish-flagged vessel Open Arms docked three weeks ago in the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, the closest EU member state to the enclave.
“World Central Kitchen teams are in Cyprus loading pallets of humanitarian aid onto a boat headed to northern Gaza,” the charity said. “We have been preparing for weeks alongside our trusted NGO partner Open Arms for the opening of a maritime aid corridor that would allow us to scale our efforts in the region,” it added
“The endeavor to establish a humanitarian maritime corridor in Gaza is making progress, and our tugboat stands prepared to embark at a moment’s notice, laden with tonnes of food, water, and vital supplies for Palestinian civilians,” Open Arms said on social media platform X.
The ship belonging to the Open Arms aid group is seen docked as it prepares to ferry some 200 tonnes of rice and flour directly to Gaza, at Larnaca harbor, Cyprus, on Friday
The Spanish-flagged vessel Open Arms will depart from the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, within the next day to deliver 200 tonnes of aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. Veronica Alfonsi, president of the aid organisation Open Arms Italy, told Al Jazeera the ship contains rice, wheat and canned tuna, but no water or medicine.
Alfonsi said the humanitarian relief contained on the vessel has already been cleared by Israel but did not provide additional details. The NGO declined to disclose the maritime route and the delivery method citing security reasons.
200 tons is about 7 to 10 trucks worth of delivery (or 11 planes) and could feed 133 thousand people for one single day, about 25% of the starving population in Northern Gaza.
It's a 15 hour trip from Cyprus, so will be tomorrow to see how they will offload that aid as Gaza City Port is just a shallow port for small fishing boats.
The BBC makes a big deal it of it anyway
Esther Camps, Open Arms coordinator, says the NGO ship docked in Larnaca, Cyprus, will deliver a small quantity of food aid to Gaza that will open the way for more to come in. “We are a pilot project to open this [maritime] corridor to allow bigger vessels and other actors with more capacity to do the same,” Camps told Al Jazeera from aboard the Open Arms, which is expected to leave for Gaza in the next day.
The ship will reach a barge near a “tiny port”, the coordinator said, without providing further details. The organisation World Central Kitchen will then unload the cargo using cranes and load it onto trucks for distribution across the Strip.
Asked whether Israel has given any security guarantees, Camps said the ship would be monitored at all times. “We go under our own responsibility but we know they are going to be around and always keep an eye on us,” she said.
“We are excited and a little nervous because we are going to do a big thing, all the world will be looking at us and we want to do it well.”
So weeks to prepare a ship to ferry 8 trucks worth of aid to Gaza, that then has to be unloaded onto trucks... Bless them for doing something, but it only emphasizes how ridiculous this now hailed maritime corridor is while aid trucks are piled up at Rafah which could easily use the military roads in the buffer zone along the fence to travel to Northern Gaza.
This is at Gaza city and there is a double road going all along the 1950 Armistice agreement line
