The charity sending food aid to Gaza on a ship travelling across the Mediterranean from Cyprus is loading a second boat with supplies, which it hopes will set off in the coming days.
Pallets containing 300 tonnes of food aid – 50% more than the first shipment – are expected to be screened and loaded by the end of Thursday, but there is no indication yet when it will leave the port of Larnaca.
The supplies include cans of beans, carrots, tuna, chickpeas and corn, plus parboiled rice, flour, oil and salt.
The UN has warned that at least 576,000 people in Gaza – a quarter of the population – are on the brink of famine and global pressure has been growing on Israel to allow more access to the territory.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s humanitarian aid and crisis management chief, said on Thursday there were already pockets of famine in Gaza, and warned it could spread to the whole region. He urged Israel to open more road routes to deliver aid.
The first ship, which is towing a barge loaded with 200 tonnes of aid, enough for half a million meals, is expected to arrive on the Gaza coast in the coming days after leaving Larnarca on Tuesday.
World Central Kitchen (WCK), a US-based food aid charity working with the governments of Cyprus and the UAE and the Spanish NGO Open Arms, had an additional 500 tonnes of aid in Cyprus ready to be loaded in what it hoped would be a series of journeys across the Mediterranean, which have been given the name Operation Safeena, meaning boat or vessel in Arabic.
Theodoros Gotsis, spokesperson for Cyprus’s foreign ministry, said the Spanish-flagged aid ship was making “good progress” and was on course for the Gaza coast. It was taking longer than expected to arrive because the boat was by necessity moving very slowly. Tracking apps had “been jammed” because the ship was sailing in seas off a war zone where communication was patchy, he said.
It was still uncertain on Thursday how the aid would be unloaded and distributed once it reached the Gaza coastline. WCK volunteers and others in Gaza are building a jetty from the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli bombing during the past five months.
A composite of Maxar Technologies’ satellite images created on 14 March showing the construction of a jetty on a beach in Gaza between 11 and 13 March. Photograph: Maxar Technologies/AFP/Getty Images
Gaza was the “most politically complex environment WCK has operated in”, its founder, the Michelin-starred chef José Andrés, said on the charity’s website at the weekend. A spokesperson said on Thursday that plans for docking and distribution were being continually adapted.
Gaza health ministry officials, meanwhile, said six people had been killed and dozens wounded when the Israeli military opened fire as crowds waited for aid trucks in Gaza City on Wednesday evening. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the incident.
It is the latest in a series of chaotic scenes and deadly incidents at aid distributions as desperately hungry people scramble for food. More than 100 people were killed last month as they waited for an aid delivery near Gaza City. Palestinian health authorities said Israeli forces shot them, while Israel said the victims had been trampled or run over.
Aid agencies in recent days have sought to vary routes for convoys to avoid large numbers of people gathering and potentially stopping convoys.
“The problem is there are very few routes to take, and all are very difficult to travel on. There have been tanks driving up and down them for months and they are basically just strips of rubble now. So people can predict where the trucks are going to be,” said an NGO official in Gaza, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The White House called for a swift investigation into an Israeli airstrike this week on a UN food distribution facility in Gaza.
Israel said the strike had killed a Hamas commander whom it targeted, and Palestinian health officials said it had killed four more people, including a UN worker.
On Wednesday, R Adm Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli military, said Israel would try to “flood” the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid from multiple entry points.
More convoys would follow six aid trucks with supplies from the World Food Programme that entered the northern part of the Gaza Strip this week through a crossing in the security fence known as the 96th gate. There would also be deliveries from other entry points, complemented by airdrops and seaborne aid cargoes, Hagari said.
Hamas was reported by local media to have killed the head of a powerful family in the territory for stealing aid and having contact with Israel. There was no immediate confirmation of the claim, but earlier this week Hamas threatened to execute “collaborators”.
Tensions in Israel and the occupied territories remain high ahead of the first Friday prayers of Ramadan. Hamas has called for a “day of escalation”, and thousands of police have been deployed around Jerusalem’s Old City.
On Thursday, Netanyahu met families of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza and said he had little positive news. The Israeli prime minister said there had been no “real response” to terms offered for a ceasefire earlier this month.
“They are still clinging to unacceptable demands ... They do not want to make progress. They want to ignite the ground during Ramadan. This is their attempt; this is their goal,” he said.