A U.S.-based charity said a consignment of almost 200 tons of food aid had reached the northern part of Gaza on Tuesday, a week after being despatched via a maritime route from the Cypriot port of Larnaca.
Konstantinos Letymbiotis
A U.S.-based charity said a consignment of almost 200 tons of food aid had reached the northern part of Gaza on Tuesday, a week after being despatched via a maritime route from the Cypriot port of Larnaca.
World Central Kitchen (WCK), working with the United Arab Emirates and Spanish charity Open Arms, sent the food via the 200-mile (322-km) sea route from Larnaca to a makeshift jetty off Gaza. The consignment arrived off Gaza on Friday.
A convoy of eight trucks belonging to the World Food Programme (WFP) then ferried the aid - the equivalent of half a million meals - to its final destination on Tuesday.
A second vessel is now moored at Larnaca with 240 tons of food onboard, waiting to travel pending weather conditions, WCK and Cypriot government officials said.
"WCK is ready to send tonnes of food weekly to Gaza with support from the international community," WCK said in a statement.
Cyprus, which backed the WCK initiative, aims to coordinate more aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave. It will host officials from a number of countries on March 21 for talks on the issue, government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said.
"There will be an exchange of views on what material support states could offer .. The extent of humanitarian assistance non-combatants have in Gaza requires the support of many countries," he told journalists.
Reporting by Michele Kambas
Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) but instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Nordic country's aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, told Swedish broadcaster TV4 on Friday.
With a month left in the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden has a long list of foreign and domestic policy actions he hopes to get done before president-elect Donald Trump assumes office, where the Republican is expected to try to reverse much of Biden's record.
The leaders of Turkey and Iran called for unity in Syria on Thursday, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged the international community to hold Israel accountable, as the heads of eight Muslim-majority countries gathered in Cairo for the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation Summit.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.