A humanitarian aid ship arrived on Friday in Gaza for the first time since the start of the war, a first step in a fledgling maritime operation to bring more aid to hungry Palestinians as aid groups say that Israel is restricting more efficient deliveries by road.
Linda Roth, a spokeswoman for World Central Kitchen, said that the Open Arms had docked at a newly built jetty on the Gaza coast and that workers were beginning to move the food onto land.
“For aid delivery at scale there is no meaningful substitute to the many land routes and entry points from Israel into Gaza,” two U.N. aid officials, Sigrid Kaag and Jorge Moreira da Silva, said in a statement this week.
Still, they welcomed the opening of a maritime corridor, given how much more humanitarian assistance is needed in Gaza.
Israel, which tightened an already restrictive blockade on Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, has said throughout the war that it is committed to allowing as much aid into Gaza as possible.
Persons:
Ursula von der Leyen, Linda Roth, Sigrid Kaag, Jorge Moreira da Silva
Organizations:
Arms, United Nations
Locations:
Gaza, Israel, Cyprus, Gaza . Israel