First aid boat unloads in Gaza as Hamas proposes new truce

A first aid ship plying a new maritime corridor from Cyprus began unloading its cargo of desperately needed food in Gaza on Friday as Hamas proposed a new six-week truce in the war.

AFP footage showed the Open Arms, which set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday, towing a barge that the Spanish charity of the same name says is loaded with 200 tonnes of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war.

World Central Kitchen, the US charity working with Open Arms, said it was readying another boat with supplies of beans, canned meat, flour, rice and dates in the Cypriot port of Larnaca but stressed the need for more road access to bring aid into Gaza.

"Our ambition is having a highway of aid going into Gaza," the group's Juan Camilo Jimenez said in a video posted on social media platform X.

The Israeli military said it had deployed troops to "secure the area" around the jetty while the cargo of aid was unloaded. The "vessel underwent a comprehensive security inspection," it said.

A spokesman for the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry said early on Saturday that 123 people had been killed across Gaza in the past 24 hours, including 36 people in a strike on a house sheltering displaced people in central Nuseirat.

Witnesses reported air strikes and fighting in the southern Gaza Strip's main city Khan Yunis as well as areas of the north where humanitarian conditions have been particularly dire.

Open Arms rescue vessel tows a World Central Kitchen barge loaded with food towards Gaza on Friday. Reuters

As Muslim worshippers marked the first Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, thousands attended prayers in the revered Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, amid a heavy security presence and restrictions on entry.

"It's the first year I see so many forces (police), and their eyes... Two years ago, I could argue with them, but now... they're giving us no chance," said Amjad Ghalib, a 44-year-old carpenter.

In southern Gaza's Rafah, the last major population centre yet to be subjected to a ground assault, AFPTV footage showed worshippers praying by the rubble of a destroyed mosque.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday he had approved the military's plan for an operation in Rafah, where most of the Gaza Strip's population has sought refuge, without providing details or a timeline.

The White House, which has said an assault on Rafah would be a "red line" without credible civilian protection plans, said it had not seen the plan approved by Netanyahu.

"We certainly would welcome the opportunity to see it," National Security Council (NSC) spokesman John Kirby said, adding that the United States could not support any plan without "credible" proposals to shelter more than one million Gazans.

Agence France-Presse