00:00 The second ship is getting set to sail for Gaza after a first one carrying some 200 tons
00:05 of food left from Cyprus, and this after several delays.
00:09 The vessels are part of a pilot program for the opening of a sea corridor to Gaza, which
00:13 aid agencies say is on the brink of famine.
00:17 It comes just a few days after 100 troops left the U.S. en route for Gaza to build a
00:21 floating pier where ships will deliver aid.
00:24 Well, we're going to talk more about the open-arm ship that's now bound for Gaza with our Delano
00:29 D'Souza, who's been taking a closer look at that today.
00:31 Delano, what more do we know?
00:32 Well, Jeannie, as you mentioned, 200 tons of food is on board this ship, which is being
00:39 run by Spanish NGO Open Arms, and it's going from Larnaca in Cyprus all the way to Gaza.
00:47 Now, the distance is quite short, roughly 390 kilometers, around 250 nautical miles.
00:53 It's a journey that's expected to take less than two days.
00:57 The ship set sail yesterday, so we're expecting it to reach between now and later tonight.
01:02 Now, because there is no port near the Gaza enclave, workers with the U.S. NGO World Central
01:09 Kitchen, which has staff currently on the ground in Gaza, are currently building a jetty,
01:14 and they're using things like rubble from building debris, et cetera, to make this possible.
01:19 The site, the jetty will then be used to offload this aid, which includes things like rice,
01:25 flour, lentils, canned goods, and there are roughly enough meals for half a million people.
01:31 Now, World Central Kitchen will then load all of this onto lorries and distribute it
01:37 to its network of some 60 community kitchens, which they have operating on the ground like
01:41 this one in Gaza.
01:43 If this operation is successful, the U.S. NGO World Central Kitchen is aiming to establish
01:48 essentially a highway of boats, which will be transporting meals from Larnaca towards
01:55 Gaza.
01:56 Currently, they have about 500 tons of stockpile sitting, waiting to be transported from Larnaca.
02:02 And it does seem like more and more countries are pursuing now this sea route as opposed
02:05 to airdropping or by land at the moment.
02:07 That's right.
02:08 We have seen in recent weeks this push to get aid in to Gaza by any means.
02:13 That's because, as you mentioned, the land route is being controlled and slowed down
02:18 by Israel's tough and cumbersome inspection process.
02:22 And the fact of the matter is, we even have the Americans who aren't able to convince
02:26 Israel's leadership to let in more aid through the land route into the Gaza Strip.
02:33 So we have the United States joining other countries like France, like Jordan, to carry
02:38 out those airdrops.
02:39 But airdrops are expensive.
02:41 And also, last week we found out that they were dangerous after one pallet, the parachute
02:46 on one pallet failed to open and killed five people.
02:49 Now, the U.S. is also going to be building a pier, a floating pier off the coast of Gaza,
02:55 which they're hoping to complete by June.
02:58 But the fact of the matter is, we need to get in aid right now, because the population
03:01 of Gaza is facing starvation.
03:04 According to the United Nations, half a million people are one step away from famine.
03:08 Now, while everyone is welcoming any aid that's coming into Gaza, whether it be through the
03:14 maritime route or by airdrops, the land route is the only one that can bring in such large
03:19 quantities of aid.
03:21 On Tuesday—that's yesterday—we had the World Food Program, who managed to get in
03:25 aid into northern Gaza.
03:26 They had stopped sending aid for almost three weeks now due to Israel's inspection process
03:33 and a complete breakdown of law and order in northern Gaza, because we have seen this
03:38 huge level of desperation.
03:41 And the organization says they need to be making aid deliveries into northern Gaza every
03:47 single day.
03:48 People are actually dying of hunger, Jeanne.
03:51 In Gaza, 25 people, mainly children, have died from malnutrition.
03:57 Out of the over 31,000 people that have been killed in this conflict in Gaza so far, most
04:02 are women and children.
04:04 Earlier we had the commissioner general of the UN's Agency for Palestinian Refugees,
04:09 or UNRWA, who put out a statement on Twitter, and he said that—he wrote about the impact
04:15 the current conflict is having on children.
04:17 According to the United Nations, there have been more children killed in Gaza over the
04:22 last four months than in all the conflicts all over the world over the past four years.
04:27 So that's something to really think about.
