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Summary
Pro-Palestinian activists on Friday continued their sea voyage on board eight aid ships aiming to break an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip despite a sail ban from normally sympathetic Cyprus and warnings that Israeli warships will prevent them from reaching their intended destination. Video footage released by the Istanbul-based foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), which organised the flotilla, showed activists talking and resting on the deck of one of the ships as it sailed in the eastern Mediterranean en route to Gaza. The ships, including four cargo vessels and a Turkish passenger ferry carrying 600 people, were heading towards Gaza in defiance of a three-year Israeli closure on the sliver of desert territory that is home to 1.5 million Palestinians. Activists have used Cyprus as a launch pad for shipping missions before, but it said it would not allow any vessels to sail from its ports to go to Gaza. Gaza's people, many of them United Nations aid recipients, suffer shortages of water and medicine. The Free Gaza Movement first started sending aid directly into Gaza in August 2008. They have been intercepted on three occasions, but had problems with their last mission from Cyprus last year. The convoys would be taking in 10,000 tonnes of supplies, including cement -- a material Israel bans, citing fears Hamas could use it to construct bunkers -- as well as water purification kits, pre-fabricated homes and medical equipment. In recent weeks Israel has allowed some goods it used to ban, such as clothes, shoes, wood and aluminium, to enter the strip through land border crossings. It continues to allow a steady flow of humanitarian aid into the coastal territory.
