A flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists who attempted to reach Gaza last year said on Thursday they would launch a new mission to the devastated territory from Barcelona on April 12.
The Global Sumud Flotilla’s first weeks-long journey across the Mediterranean Sea to Gaza, blockaded by Israel during the war against Palestinian militant group Hamas, drew worldwide attention.
Israel’s interception of their boats and arrests of the activists as they approached Gaza, which suffered severe shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel, sparked international condemnation.
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The group, which described its first attempt as a humanitarian mission, said the latest trip starting in Spain’s second city would gather more than 80 boats and 1,000 international participants.
“The cost of inaction is too high to bear,” it said in a statement, adding that a land-based movement would join the maritime action to create pressure in multiple countries.
“As Gaza endures intensifying blockade, violence, and deprivation, the mission is a principled, nonviolent intervention: a defence of human dignity, a call for humanitarian access, and a demand for international accountability,” the group said.
Gaza is under a fragile ceasefire agreed last October, which followed two years of devastating conflict sparked by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
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The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people Israel, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli figures tallied by AFP. Palestinian militants also abducted 251 hostages.
The retaliatory Israeli military campaign killed more than 70,000 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry whose figures the United Nations considers reliable.
Both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violating the ceasefire.
Gaza’s health ministry says Israeli strikes have killed more than 700 Palestinians since the truce. Israel says five of its soldiers have been killed in the same period.
