First ship carrying 200 tons aid reaches Gaza

The first ship towing a barge of humanitarian aid to Gaza has unloaded supplies onto the shore.

The Spanish ship Open Arms left Cyprus on Tuesday with 200 tonnes of food desperately needed for Gaza, which the UN says is on the brink of famine.

Videos posted online show a crane moving crates from the barge to lorries waiting on a purpose-built jetty.

It marks the start of a trial to see if sea deliveries are effective after air and land deliveries proved difficult.

World Central Kitchen (WCK), which supplied the food, carried out the mission in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to deliver the barge's cargo of rice, flour, legumes, canned vegetables and canned proteins.

Gaza has no functioning port, so a jetty stemming from the shoreline was built by WCK's team. How the food will be distributed in Gaza remains unclear.

WCK's founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that all the food aid from the barge had been loaded into 12 lorries.

"We did it!" he wrote, adding that this was a test to see if they could bring even more aid in the next shipment - up to "thousands of tons a week".

In a statement, Israel said the Open Arms vessel and its cargo were inspected in Cyprus, and that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops had been deployed to secure the shoreline.