Aid for Gaza was being loaded onto a ship in Cyprus on Wednesday in what was expected to be the first cargo to be delivered using a U.S. pier built to expedite supplies to the besieged enclave.
Containers were being stacked on the U.S. flagged Sagamore, docked at the port of Larnaca, on Wednesday. Some containers to the ship were labelled as aid from the United Arab Emirates. Konstantinos Letymbiotis, a Cyprus government spokesperson, said a U.S jetty built to handle aid for Gaza had been completed.
“We are completing the loading of aid onto a U.S. vessel now in Larnaca and once the platform is in place this part of the process (shipment) can commence,” he said.
It was unclear when the vessel would depart. Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, has devastated the tiny Gaza Strip, where aid agencies warn its 2.3 million people are facing imminent famine.
Cyprus opened a sea corridor in March to ship aid directly to Gaza, where deliveries via land have been severely disrupted by border closures and Israel’s military operations. U.S.-based charity World Food Kitchen (WCK) used the route twice before seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli air strike on April 1.
Gaza lacks port infrastructure and the U.S. has built a custom-made offshore jetty to take delivery of aid shipments.
Once delivered, aid would be offloaded onto U.S. military logistics support vessels and then to a causeway where it would be loaded onto trucks for onward delivery, U.S. officials have said.
