Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides expected on Wednesday that sending aid shipments by sea to Gaza via Cyprus would resume soon, after stopping last week following the killing of seven aid workers in an Israeli raid in Gaza, according to the Cypriot news site Cypress News.
About a thousand tons of aid are stored in Cyprus, which were to arrive in Gaza in coordination with the “Global Central Kitchen” organization, which suspended its operations in Gaza following the killing of its employees at the beginning of this April.
The US plans to set up a dock, with a target date of May 1, on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast that will enable aid deliveries which will be pre-screened in Cyprus, with Israeli oversight.
With that jetty in place, Cyprus expects aid to resume soon, Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides said.
“We are in communication with countries we have worked with from the outset, so that very soon humanitarian aid from Cyprus will resume after the completion of the U.S. project in Gaza,” he said.
Six months into Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, the devastated Palestinian enclave faces widespread famine and disease with almost all of its residents homeless.
WCK has been working in Gaza since October, using land, air, and most recently sea, to deliver aid to the Strip and supply its network of more than 60 community kitchens.
The workers were halfway to unloading a second shipment of aid via the Cyprus road when their convoy of three vehicles was hit by Israeli strikes.
After WCK announced the halt, the convoy of ships participating in the mission returned to Cyprus on 3 April with undelivered aid.
Initially, the ship carrying food was brought to port to unload its cargo after bad weather in Cyprus this week.
“The plan is to store the aid until WCK decides what it wants to do,” a Cypriot official told Reuters.
