The first ship that will cover the recently opened maritime corridor between Cyprus and the Gaza Strip, from the non-governmental organization Open Arms, set sail this Tuesday from Cyprus with a load of 200 tons of food.

“We are setting sail! The joint mission Open Arms and World Central Kitchen sets sail from Cyprus and heads to Gaza loaded with 200 tons of food,” the NGO said in a message published on its account on the social network X.

“This opens the humanitarian maritime corridor to the Strip, in a highly complex mission that we trust will be the first of many that will manage to alleviate the humanitarian emergency situation that the population is experiencing,” he added.

For its part, World Central Kitchen has confirmed that the ship has set sail with “almost 200 tons of food, rice, flour, legumes, canned vegetables and proteins”. “Together with UAE Aid and the Cyprus Foreign Ministry, our aid team is working to send as many aid ships as possible,” she added.

The ‘Open Arms’ trip is the first of the so-called ‘Amalthea’ operation which aims to establish a maritime humanitarian corridor between Cyprus and the Palestinian enclave. Amalthea, which means Tenderness, is the name of the wet nurse of the god Zeus in Greek mythology.

The route from Cyprus to Gaza is about 210 nautical miles (about 388 kilometers), a distance that takes about 25 hours to travel under normal conditions. The ‘Open Arms’ is expected to take around 50 hours on the journey.

The United Nations and various non-governmental organizations have denounced the extensive restrictions imposed by Israel on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, engulfed in a very serious humanitarian crisis due to the military offensive – launched after the attacks carried out on October 7 by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – which has set off alarms the risk of large-scale famineespecially given the collapse of the Gazan health system.