dpa
Athens
A freighter and two smaller ships carrying around 875 tonnes of aid for the suffering population in the embattled Gaza Strip departed from the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Saturday afternoon, Cypriot radio and the Cyprus Times news portal reported.
Israeli inspectors checked the cargo before the freighter Jennifer and the tugboats Open Arms and Ledra Dynamic set off, according to Cypriot government spokesman Giannis Antoniou. One of the two tugs accompanying the cargo ship is towing a platform with relief supplies behind it, meaning that all three ships are travelling very slowly.
This platform is to be used to deliver aid to the coast of the Gaza Strip, where an Israeli military operation targeting the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement has been underway since October.
The Gaza Strip has no harbour where larger ships can enter and the coastal waters are shallow. This is the second aid delivery by sea from Cyprus. Around a fortnight ago, the tugboat from the aid organization of the same name, Open Arms, brought around 200 tons of material and food to the Gaza Strip using this route.
The non-governmental organization (NGO) World Central Kitchen was responsible for distributing the relief supplies to the people - and that is the plan this time as well. The port of Larnaca is around 400 kilometres from Gaza. The ships with the second aid delivery are expected to arrive in around 65 hours, experts estimated on Cypriot radio.
The completion of a large floating dock off the Gaza Strip for the delivery of aid supplies, which is being built by the US armed forces, is eagerly awaited. The government of the EU island republic of Cyprus has received information that it could be ready for use as early as mid-April.
This would speed up the delivery of aid.
The Gaza war was triggered by a terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas and other militants on October 7.
Although Germany supports the Israeli military operation against Hamas in principle, it criticizes the conduct of the war, which has already claimed the lives of many thousands of civilians and left the population with hardly any food and medicine.
