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A COALITION of pro-Palestinian activists announced on Thursday plans to launch a new maritime mission to Gaza from Barcelona on April 12, following a previous high-profile attempt last year that drew international attention.
AFP cited on Friday that the Global Sumud Flotilla’s first weeks-long voyage across the Mediterranean was intercepted by Israel, which arrested participants as they approached Gaza, a territory still grappling with severe shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel.
The incident prompted widespread condemnation worldwide.
The group described the forthcoming journey as a humanitarian mission and said it would include more than 80 vessels and around 1,000 international participants.
“The cost of inaction is too high to bear,” the organisation said in a statement, noting that a parallel land-based campaign across multiple countries would accompany the maritime effort.
“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 statement added.
Gaza remains under a fragile ceasefire brokered last October, following two years of devastating conflict triggered by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The assault left 1,221 Israelis dead, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli figures. Palestinian groups also took 251 hostages.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign killed more than 70,000 people in Gaza, largely civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, whose data the United Nations regards as credible.
Both sides have accused one another of breaching the truce.
Since the ceasefire, Gaza’s health ministry reports that over 700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes, while Israel says five of its soldiers have died in the same period. - April 3, 2026