The mission, funded mostly by the United Arab Emirates, is organised by US based charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), while Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms supplied the ship.
“Our goal is to establish a maritime highway of boats and barges stocked with millions of meals continuously headed towards Gaza,” said WCK founder Jose Andres and chief executive officer Erin Gore in a statement.
WCK says it has a further 500 tonnes of aid in Cyprus ready for dispatch.
The charities intend to take aid directly to Gaza, which has been sealed off from the outside world since Israel began its offensive in response to an October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants.
With the lack of port infrastructure, WCK said it was building a landing jetty in Gaza with material from destroyed buildings and rubble.
This is a separate initiative to a plan announced by US President Joe Biden last week to build a temporary pier in the Gaza to facilitate aid deliveries by sea.
Construction of the jetty was “well underway”, WCK’s Andres said in a post on X. “We may fail, but the biggest failure will not be trying!” he wrote, posting a picture of work with bulldozers apparently levelling out ground close to sea.
The mission, if successful, would signify the first easing of an Israeli naval blockade imposed on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas took control of the Palestinian enclave.
The United Nations has warned of widespread famine among Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians five months into the war. Many people are cramped into makeshift tents with little in the way of food or basic medical supplies in the southern city of Rafah.
Cyprus said its maritime corridor offers a fast-track workaround to getting aid delivered where needed.
UN warns of ‘imminent’ famine in Gaza as some resort to eating animal fodder
UN warns of ‘imminent’ famine in Gaza as some resort to eating animal fodder
Cargoes are to undergo security inspections in Cyprus by a team including personnel from Israel, eliminating the need for offloading screenings to remove potential hold-ups in aid deliveries.
The US military said its vessel, the General Frank S. Besson, was also en route to provide humanitarian relief to Gaza by sea. The US military also said it had parachuted more than 27,600 meals and 25,900 bottles of water into northern Gaza.
Jordanian state media said there had been seven humanitarian air drops on Monday, with Jordan, the US, Egypt, France and Belgium participating. Morocco was also scheduled to join the effort, Israeli media reported.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has appealed for a truce, the release of hostages and the removal of obstacles to life-saving aid. He said a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah could put the people of Gaza in “an even deeper circle of hell”.
Fighters from Hamas, which administers Gaza, killed 1,200 people in an October 7 attack on Israel and took 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies, an assault that sparked one of the bloodiest wars in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza authorities, while infrastructure has been obliterated.
Negotiations on a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas remain deadlocked in Cairo. Israel says any ceasefire must be temporary and that its goal remains the destruction of Hamas. Hamas says it will release hostages only as part of a deal that ends the war.
Hopes of a ceasefire for Ramadan were dashed on Monday when an Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City killed 16 people and wounded several others, Palestinian health officials said.
