GAZA CITY - The first aid vessel heading to the besieged Gaza Strip via a new maritime corridor was visible Friday off the coast of the war-ravaged territory, an AFP journalist said.
Images shot by the journalist showed the Open Arms towing a barge which the Spanish charity operating it says is carrying 200 tonnes of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war.
Ship-tracking websites showed the Open Arms roughly five kilometres (three miles) off the coast of northern Gaza.
A handful of civilians gathered on the rubble-strewn coast on Friday to watch the vessel, AFP footage showed, though it was unclear when it would actually reach shore.
"I want (the aid) for my children. I want them to live and not die of hunger", Abu Issa Ibrahim Filfil, a 35-year-old displaced Palestinian man, told AFP.
"All they are eating is wild plants. There is no bread", he said.
Open Arms is a partner of the United States charity World Central Kitchen, which has a team in Gaza building a jetty onto which the cargo can be unloaded.
Cyprus, the Mediterranean nation which is the starting point for the maritime corridor, has said a second, bigger vessel is being readied to make the same journey.
However, the sea missions and airdrops are "no alternative" to land deliveries, 25 organisations including Amnesty International and Oxfam said in a statement this week.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza has in recent weeks recorded at least 27 deaths from malnutrition and dehydration, most of them children.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign to eliminate Hamas has killed at least 31,341 people, according to the health ministry.