First aid boat unloads in Gaza as Hamas proposes new truce

AFP | Gaza    

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

A first aid ship plying a new maritime corridor from Cyprus began unloading its cargo of desperately needed food in Gaza yesterday as Hamas proposed a new six-week truce in the war.

AFP footage showed the Open Arms, which set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday, towing a barge that the Spanish charity operating it says is loaded with 200 tonnes of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war.

“World Central Kitchen is unloading the barge connected now to the jetty,” said Linda Roth, a spokesperson for the US charity that is working with Open Arms. The Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry said Israeli fire had earlier killed 20 people waiting to receive aid.

Israel blamed “armed Palestinians” it said had opened fire on civilians. The ministry said at least 149 people had been killed in the past 24 hours. Witnesses reported air strikes and fighting in the southern Gaza Strip’s main city Khan Yunis as well as areas of the north where humanitarian conditions have been particularly dire.

As Muslim worshippers marked the first yesterday of the fasting month of Ramadan, AFP photographers saw Palestinians from the occupied West Bank queueing to pass through Israeli checkpoints to reach the revered Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem. With tensions soaring over the Gaza war, Israel deployed thousands of police across Jerusalem’s Old City.