Tons of food aid transported by sea are unloaded in Gaza to avoid exacerbating famine among the population
The first ship carrying food supplies began unloading tons of aid in the besieged Gaza Strip to avoid famine, at a time when negotiations are resuming in order to reach a truce in the war that has been ongoing between Israel and Hamas for more than five months.
The spokesman for the Hamas Ministry of Health, Ashraf al Qudra, announced on Saturday morning the death of 36 people, including children and women, in a strike on a house where displaced people had taken refuge in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.
A total of about 123 people were killed since Friday evening throughout the Gaza Strip.
While Hamas was demanding a final ceasefire before any agreement on the release of hostages held in Gaza, it announced on Friday that it was ready for a six-week truce that would include the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
According to Hamas proposal, they are ready to release 42 Israeli hostages, including women, children, the elderly and the sick, provided that Israel releases 20 to 30 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli detainee.
Hamas demands the release of 30 to 50 Palestinian detainees in exchange for the release of every soldier detained by it.
Also, the first phase includes military withdrawal from all cities and populated areas in the Gaza Strip, the return of the displaced without restrictions, and the flow of aid at no less than 500 trucks per day.
For his part, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the mediating countries are working tirelessly to fill the remaining gaps with the aim of reaching an agreement on the hostages and a ceasefire.
As for, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that a delegation will travel to Qatar as part of the negotiations, without specifying a date for that.
In addition to the strikes and battles, the United Nations fears a famine that will spread across the entire sector, especially in the north, which was greatly devastated by the war and is difficult to reach.
Aid arrives mainly from Egypt through the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza, after being subjected to careful Israeli inspection, but it remains completely insufficient given the enormous needs of the population of 2.4 million people.
There is a race against time in an attempt to deliver more humanitarian aid directly to the northern Gaza Strip by dropping it from the air or through a sea corridor from Cyprus.
In this context, a ship belonging to the Spanish non-governmental Open Arms organization sailed from Cyprus on Tuesday, carrying a platform loaded with 200 tons of supplies from the “World Kitchen Central” organization.
It arrived at a floating dock on the shore of the Gaza Strip and began unloading its cargo on Friday afternoon.
Open Arms organization said on X, “World Kitchen Central unloads about 200 tons of rice, flour, proteins, etc…, and it arrived by sea earlier; While this cargo is unloaded, our second ship is preparing to sail from Cyprus with hundreds of tons of additional food supplies”.
Open Arms confirmed, “Despite the darkness and difficulties, work in Gaza does not stop to unload 200 tons of food from World Central Kitchen… We hope that this corridor that we inaugurated today will form a parallel route to the land roads to alleviate the burden of hunger and suffering”.
The United Nations, the European Union, the United States and other countries have stressed in recent days that transporting aid by sea or air cannot completely replace its transport by land.
For its part, the Israeli army said in a statement that its forces were deployed to secure the area, stressing that the Gaza ship underwent a full security inspection.
The Israeli army added that the entry of humanitarian aid by sea doesn’t violate the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
As of date, 31,490 killed, most of them civilians, women and children, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Health in Gaza on Friday.
