The first aid vessel heading to the besieged Gaza Strip via a new maritime corridor was visible on Friday off the coast of the war-ravaged territory, an AFP journalist said.
Images shot by the journalist showed the Open Arms towing a barge. The Spanish charity operating it says that it is carrying 200 tons of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war.
Ship-tracking websites showed the Open Arms roughly five kilometers (three miles) off the coast of northern Gaza.
A handful of civilians gathered on the rubble-strewn coast on Friday to watch the vessel, AFP footage showed, though it was unclear when it would actually reach shore.
“I want (the aid) for my children. I want them to live and not die of hunger,” Abu Issa Ibrahim Filfil, a 35-year-old displaced Palestinian man, told AFP. “All they are eating is wild plants. There is no bread,” he said.
Open Arms is a partner of the United States charity World Central Kitchen, which has a team in Gaza building a jetty onto which the cargo can be unloaded.
Cyprus, the Mediterranean nation which is the starting point for the maritime corridor, said that a second, bigger vessel is being readied to make the same journey.
However, the sea missions and airdrops are “no alternative” to land deliveries, said 25 organizations, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, in a statement this week.
The Health Ministry in Gaza recorded at least 27 deaths in recent weeks from malnutrition and dehydration, most of them children.
With AFP
