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A first vessel delivering aid to the battered Gaza Strip has fully unloaded, depositing 200 tons of food, water and supplies at the starving enclave, and inaugurating a humanitarian sea corridor from Cyprus.
Videos posted online show a crane transferring crates from the barge onto trucks on a custom-built jetty.
A second vessel was already being loaded in the Cypriot port of Larnaca, the World Central Kitchen (WCK), a U.S. charity, said on Saturday morning.
The drop off marks an initial success for the new maritime corridor, which the WCK and Spanish NGO Open Arms opened this week with the support of various EU and Arab governments.
“This was a test,” wrote WCK founder José Andrés on X. “[W]e could bring thousands of tons a week.”
“We want to increase the volume of humanitarian aid transfer, so we are talking to several states,” Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters late Friday. “We are on a very good track, there is support after that started from clearly many more states because they see that what we said is being implemented and we are continuing,” he said.
A dozen trucks will distribute the first provisions to northern Gaza, where acute child malnutrition has doubled in the last month, according to the United Nations.
“The speed at which this catastrophic child malnutrition crisis in Gaza has unfolded is shocking, especially when desperately needed assistance has been at the ready just a few miles away,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director, on Friday.
The U.N. agency reports that at least 23 children in northern Gaza have died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks, adding to the mounting toll of children killed by Israeli bombing — up to 13,450, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s latest count.
One in three children under the age of 2 in northern Gaza is now acutely malnourished and famine is looming, the main U.N. agency operating in the Palestinian enclave said on Saturday. “Children’s malnutrition is spreading fast and reaching unprecedented levels in Gaza,” the agency said in a social media post.
The U.S. is planning to construct its own floating dock, with a military ship en route carrying building equipment. It has also been parachuting food packages into Gaza, along with France and other countries. But experts warn that neither sea nor air deliveries will make up for blocked land convoys.
“This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem,” said Avril Benoit, executive director for Doctors Without Borders, this week. Governments “should insist on immediate humanitarian access using the roads and entry points that already exist.”
Christodoulides said he was in touch with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and had requested technical assistance with the transport “so that we can run even faster.”
“A team will be sent from the Netherlands and a responsible minister will be in Cyprus on Tuesday,” he said. “We will have visits to Cyprus from heads of state who supported the initiative; they have already expressed their interest.”
Nektaria Stamouli contributed reporting.
