"We are now very close to the opening of the corridor, hopefully this Sunday. And I'm very glad to see that an initial pilot operation will be launched today," the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, told reporters after touring harbour facilities at the Cypriot port of Larnaca, the departure point for the aid shipments.
A first delivery is expected to set sail today, with a ship operated by a Spanish search and rescue group, Open Arms, taking food provided by the charity World Central Kitchen.
"Today we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and we stand by the innocent civilians in Palestine," von der Leyen said.
The EU said the shipments would go straight to Gaza, 210 nautical miles away, but did not say where they would land or unload, or how the food would be distributed from the landing point. It was also unclear what the link was between the weekend shipments and a US plan, announced by Joe Biden on Thursday night, to build a floating dock off the Gaza shore over the next few weeks to receive aid shipments from Cyprus.
Von Der Leyen did not mention the US plan in her remarks in Larnaca, and Biden did not mention this weekend's planned deliveries in his State of the Union speech to Congress.
Yesterday the US, EU and other countries involved in the effort formally announced their backing for the sea aid corridor, built around a proposal developed by Cyprus since November, the Amalthea initiative, outlining a mechanism for carrying out secure shipments to Gaza.
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