LARNACA, Cyprus (Reuters) -A sea convoy of undelivered food for Gaza returned to Cyprus on Wednesday after aid workers of World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Monday evening.
A cargo ship carrying 240 metric tons of food that had been destined for the people of the beseiged Palestinian enclave sailed back to Larnaca in Cyprus following the deadly attack, dropping anchor just outside the port.
A second ship, the Open Arms owned by a Spanish NGO working with WCK, arrived earlier.
The undelivered aid was part of a consignment of about 340 tons sent to Gaza from Cyprus on March 30. The aid workers killed in Gaza had just finished unloading 100 tons from a barge, also sent from Cyprus.
WCK, active in Gaza since October, has paused operations in the territory since the killings, and turned around its flotilla of ships back to Cyprus.
In March WCK launched an inaugural sea corridor transporting aid to the enclave from the east Mediterranean island.
Cyprus has offered to supplement aid getting in to Gaza by sea with a fast track on-island security screening process for aid overseen by Israel.
Spanish charity Open Arms, which provided a salvage vessel for both missions arranged by WCK, took a group photo of activists wearing WCK t-shirts and embracing each other on the bow of the salvage ship during its sail to Cyprus.
They wrote on X: "The end of mission 110 arrives, the one we never could have imagined, the most painful.
"We miss Saifeddin, Zomi, Damian, Jacob, John, Jim, and James, but they will remain forever in our memory, and we will continue to speak up for them, for the more than 32,500 people killed in #Gaza, the hundreds of humanitarian workers, the destroyed hospitals, journalists and all the 'isolated cases' that are not an accident, but part of an structure of death and destruction. We will never forget you.
"Today, the pain of the @wckitchen family is also ours."
(Reporting by Yiannis Kourtoglou, writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Sandra Maler)
