Aid ships ‘coming and going’ to Gaza (updated)
Four ships travelled from Larnaca over the weekend with almost 1,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Gaza along the Amalthea corridor, director of the president’s press office Victoras Papadopoulos said on Tuesday.
Papadopoulos was speaking to state broadcaster CyBC in the morning about the corridor and how it is progressing.
“We have a continuous flow of ships. Four ships have been going and coming back,” he said about the corridor.
He added that the four ships are three American ones and one French ship.
According to Papadopoulos, large quantities of humanitarian material from the United States, Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Romania and other countries are concentrated in the port of Larnaca.
He also said that in the next 24 hours aid from Cyprus would be sent to Gaza.
Papadopoulos noted that the whole operation is very well set up and is working according to plan.
Meanwhile, President Nikos Christodoulides on Tuesday announced that several leaders from various countries will visit Cyprus soon to show support for the Amalthea corridor.
Speaking in Limassol, Christodoulides said the initiative is “on track”.
“We have a lot of help from third countries who want to contribute to this effort,” he said.
The president added that “we will also have some visits soon from heads of state who have supported this initiative, they want to support it even more.
“I think it is an important development that now an initiative of the Republic of Cyprus is being implemented, which started, let me remind you, in October 2023,” he said.
On Monday, the US armed forces joint command in charge of the Middle East (Centcom) announced that more than 569 metric tonnes of humanitarian aid have been delivered through the artificial pier set up off Gaza.
However, in a post on the platform X, the United Nations said that not all the aid had reached the warehouses where it was intended to go yet.
Aid shipments began arriving at the pier on Friday as international pressure intensified on Israel to allow more to be distributed to the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The UN announced that 10 shipments of food from the pier arrived at the World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in Deir al-Bala on Friday, clarifying that they were transported by the agency’s contractors.
But on Saturday, only five trucks arrived at the depot while 11 others were emptied by Palestinians during their journey from areas where a UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that access to aid has been almost non-existent so far.
The UN did not receive any aid through the jetty either the Sunday before last or yesterday, Monday, the official added.