A boat carrying international activists, including a Irish Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, docked in the Gaza Strip today after sailing from Cyprus despite an Israeli naval blockade on the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.
It was the second such voyage by the "Free Gaza" movement. Forty-six activists on two boats sailed to the Gaza Strip without interference from Israeli authorities in August.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman had said the Israeli navy would not allow the boat that left Larnaca yesterday to reach Gaza. He later said the decision had been changed.
Ms Corrigan Maguire, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work in an anti-violence campaign in Northern Ireland, was among the 27 people from 13 countries on the boat, which carried a tonne of medical supplies.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said last week virtually no medical supplies were reaching the Gaza Strip. It blamed a lack of cooperation between Palestinian authorities in the West Bank, where President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah
Faction holds sway, and Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip in 2007.
"We got a list of zero stock medicines in Gaza, like baby formula, paracetamol, anti-histamine tablets," said Palestinian Briton Ibrahim Hamami (44) a family physician.
Israel pulled troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 but still patrols its waters. It tightened overland border restrictions after Hamas took over.