NICOSIA: Humanitarian aid for Gaza is continuing to leave Cyprus by sea and will be held in floating storage off the coast of the enclave until a US-built military pier undergoes repairs, a Cypriot government official said on Thursday.
Malnutrition is widespread in Gaza after almost eight months of war and the UN said on Wednesday the amount of aid entering the enclave had fallen by two-thirds since Israel began military operations in the enclave’s southern Rafah region this month.
The US military announced earlier in the week that a purpose-built jetty it anchored off Gaza’s coast to receive aid by sea was being temporarily removed after part of the structure broke off, two weeks after it started operating.
Cyprus government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said the offloading of aid for the Palestinian enclave — devastated by Israel’s air and ground war against its ruling Hamas group — had slowed down but the sea corridor had not ceased operating.
“The mechanism surrounding how the floating pier works allows for the possibility of floating storage off Gaza, with offloading to resume when conditions allow,” Letymbiotis said, blaming the problem on rough seas.
The pier was announced by US President Joe Biden in March
and involved the military assembling the floating structure off
the Palestinian enclave’s Mediterranean coast. Estimated to cost $320 million for the first 90 days and involving about 1,000 US service members, it went into operation two weeks ago.
Aid from France was expected to depart for Gaza from Cyprus on Thursday, while 3,000 tons of US aid will leave early next week, Letymbiotis said.
The United Arab Emirates, Britain, the US, Romania, Italy, the European Mechanism for Civil Protection, the World Food Programme and the International Organization for Migration have already donated aid destined for the pier, he said.
Cyprus had also received interest from Japan and Singapore, as well as other EU member states.
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesperson said a portion of the pier had separated and it would be towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod for repairs. Letymbiotis said the US had indicated that the problem would be fixed in coming days and that the pier could “possibly” resume operations by the middle of next week.
Eleven ship-shuttles of aid have left Cyprus since the operation started, with enough already distributed in Gaza to “provide food to tens of thousands of non-combatants for a month,” Letymbiotis said.
“The aim of offering humanitarian aid to 500,000 people a month is possible.”
Aid for Gaza still leaving Cyprus by sea while landing pier fixed
https://arab.news/vs68j
Aid for Gaza still leaving Cyprus by sea while landing pier fixed
- Offloading aid had slowed down, but the sea corridor had not ceased operating
Libya’s security authorities free more than 200 migrants from ‘secret prison’, two security sources say
- Security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker
BENGHAZI: Libya’s security authorities have freed more than 200 migrants from what they described as a secret prison in the town of Kufra in the southeast of the country after they were held captive in inhuman conditions, two security sources from the city told Reuters on Sunday.
The security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker.
One of the sources said this person had not yet been detained.
“Some of the freed migrants were held captive up to two years in the underground cells,” this source said.
The other source said what the operation had found was “one of the most serious crimes against humanity that has been uncovered in the region.”
“The operation resulted in a raid on a secret prison within the city, where several inhumane underground detention cells were uncovered,” one of the sources added.
The freed migrants are from sub-Saharan Africa, mainly from Somalia and Eritrea, including women and children, the sources said. Kufra lies in eastern Libya, about 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the capital Tripoli.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
The oil-based Libyan economy is also a draw for impoverished migrants seeking work, but security throughout the sprawling country is poor, leaving migrants vulnerable to abuses.
At least 21 bodies of migrants were found in a mass grave in eastern Libya last week, with up to 10 survivors in the group bearing signs of having been tortured before they were freed from captivity, two security sources told Reuters.
Libya’s attorney general said in a statement on Friday the authorities in the east of the country had referred a defendant to the court for trial in connection with the mass grave on charges of “committing serious violations against migrants.”
In February last year, 39 bodies of migrants were recovered from about 55 mass graves in Kufra. The town houses tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled the conflict that erupted in Sudan in 2023.
