Abdullah Abu Deif (Rafah, Cairo)
A ship carrying about 200 tons of food sailed from a port in Cyprus yesterday, in a first attempt to launch a new sea route to deliver aid to residents of the Gaza Strip who are on the brink of famine.
The rescue ship “Open Arms” was seen sailing from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, pulling a barge carrying flour, rice and proteins, and was organized by the US-based World Central Kitchen Foundation.
The journey to Gaza takes about 15 hours, but the journey of a heavy tug ship may take much longer, up to two days. Cyprus is located just over 320 kilometers northwest of Gaza.
The US military said that the ship, “General Frank S. Bison, its subsidiary, is also on its way to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea.
Attention has turned to alternative methods, including sea and air drops, for aid, with relief agencies saying that delivering supplies to Gaza has faced bureaucratic obstacles and insecurity since the outbreak of war on October 7. Even Israel's allies are calling for easier access of aid to the Strip. The inauguration of the new sea route is the culmination of months of preparation.
With a lack of port infrastructure, World Central Kitchen said it is building a dock in Gaza with materials from destroyed buildings and rubble. This is a separate initiative from a plan announced by US President Joe Biden last week to build a temporary dock in Gaza to facilitate the delivery of aid by sea.
José Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen, said in a post on the X website that construction of the pier “is underway.”
He added: “Some of our calculations indicate that the port will be ready when we get there, and most importantly, we have a team there to support the distribution of this aid,” referring to the organization’s team that has been on the ground in Gaza for several months.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs welcomed efforts to deliver aid by sea and air, but warned that this was insufficient. Aid agencies say such efforts can provide only limited relief, as long as most land crossings remain completely closed by Israel. “This is no substitute for ground transportation of food and other emergency aid to Gaza,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “This cannot make up for that.”
Israel says it is not responsible for the famine in Gaza because it allows aid to pass through two crossings at the southern border of the Strip. Aid agencies say that's not enough to get enough supplies, let alone distribute them safely in an increasingly lawless war zone.
The World Food Program said today that it was able to send an aid convoy to Gaza City, which is the first convoy to successfully reach the northern Gaza Strip since February 20.
The program's spokeswoman, Shatha Al-Mughrabi, said that it was finally able to deliver food aid sufficient for 25,000 people to Gaza City in the early hours of yesterday morning, adding that this proves that transporting food by land is still possible.
Al-Maghrabi expressed her hope to expand the scope of this aid, stressing the need for its delivery to be regular and consistent. The United Nations estimates that about a quarter of the Gaza Strip's population faces the risk of famine, especially in the north, which it says Israel has effectively made beyond the reach of all supplies.
For his part, Ammar Ammar, spokesman for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), revealed to Al-Ittihad that 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip are separated from their families, or one percent of the displaced population of 1.7 million people, while about 335 suffer. A child is clearly at risk of acute malnutrition and preventable death. He said in a statement to Al-Ittihad that as the situation continues as it is and the absence or insufficient entry of relief supplies, the suffering of children under the age of five will increase due to increased forms of malnutrition that threaten their lives in the absence of treatment, relief aid, and adequate food.
International organizations have warned of monitoring deaths inside the Gaza Strip as a result of malnutrition and extreme hunger, which has begun to affect young children in particular, at a time when several countries, led by the UAE, are intensifying airdrops of relief aid to provide some of the people’s needs to survive. . Ammar explained that UNICEF is on the ground in cooperation with field partners to provide emergency, life-saving humanitarian needs for children and their families, providing safe drinking water to more than 1.1 million people, providing 600,000 doses of life-saving vaccines for children, nutritional supplements and vitamins, and cash transfers to more than 600. A thousand people.
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