Ship with hundreds of tons of food aid for Gaza nears Ashdod port

By AP 19 August 2025, 7:29 am

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Containers loaded with humanitarian aid for Gaza, including flour, pasta, baby food and canned goods, are being loaded aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

After setting off from Cyprus, a ship loaded with 1,200 tons of food supplies for the Gaza Strip is approaching the port of Ashdod in southern Israel, in a renewed effort to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

The Panamanian-flagged vessel is loaded with 52 containers carrying food aid such as pasta, rice, baby food and canned goods. Israeli customs officials had screened the aid at the Cypriot port of Limassol, from where the ship departed on Monday.

Some 700 tons of the aid is from Cyprus, purchased with money donated by the United Arab Emirates to the so-called Amalthea Fund, set up last year for donors to help with seaborne aid. The rest comes from Italy, the Maltese government, a Catholic religious order in Malta and the Kuwaiti nongovernmental organization Al Salam Association.

Shipborne deliveries can bring much larger quantities of aid than the air drops that several nations have recently made in Gaza. Most of the aid to the territory arrives via trucks.

“The situation is beyond dire,” Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos tells The Associated Press.

The Cypriot Foreign Ministry says Tuesday’s mission is led by the United Nations but is a coordinated effort. Once offloaded at Ashdod, UN aid employees will arrange for the aid to be trucked to storage areas and food stations operated by the World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that has distributed aid in Gaza.

The charity, which was behind the first aid shipment to Gaza from Cyprus last year aboard a tug-towed barge, is widely trusted in the battered territory.

“The contribution of everyone involved is crucial and their commitment incredible,” Kombos says.

Cyprus was the staging area last year for 22,000 tons of aid deliveries by ship directly to Gaza through a pier operated by World Central Kitchen and a US military-run docking facility known as the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system.

By late July 2024, aid groups pulled out of the project, ending a mission plagued by repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other emergency supplies could get to those in need.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.