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BARCELONA: A flotilla of ships was preparing to set sail for the Gaza Strip Sunday with humanitarian aid on board, while Israel stepped up its offensive on Gaza City and is limiting the deliveries of food and basic supplies in the north of the Palestinian territory.

The Global Sumud Flotilla will try to break the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory and bring humanitarian aid, food, water and medicine to Gaza.

The maritime convoy, made up of delegations from 44 countries, will be joined by more ships from ports in Italy, Greece, and Tunisia in the coming days, on its route from the western end of the Mediterranean to the Gaza Strip, according to organizers. They expect around 20 vessels in total once all are together.

Hours before their departure, boats flying Palestinian flags began docking in line at a pier in Barcelona, while hundreds of supporters wearing keffiyehs chanted “Free Palestine!” and “Boycott Israel!”

“The story here is about Palestine. The story here is how people are being deliberately deprived of the very basic means to survive,” said Swedish activist Greta Thunberg at a press conference.

“The story here is how the world can be silent and how those in power ... are in every possible way betraying and failing Palestinians and all oppressed peoples of the world,” added Thunberg, who will be one of the most recognizable figures on the expedition, alongside actors Susan Sarandon and Liam Cunningham, as well as activists, politicians and journalists.

It is not the first time Thunberg will attempt to reach Gaza waters this year. She was deported in June when the ship she was traveling on with 11 other people, the Madleen, was stopped by the Israeli military.

In late July, the Israeli military stopped another aid ship, detained 21 international activists and reporters, and seized its cargo, including baby formula, food and medicine, according to Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

Earlier this month the leading authority on food crises said that Gaza City was in famine and that half a million people across the strip were facing catastrophic levels of hunger.

An Israeli official said Saturday that the country will soon halt or slow humanitarian aid into parts of northern Gaza, as it expands its military offensive against Hamas, a day after the city was declared a combat zone.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 332 Palestinians have died from malnutrition-related causes during the war, including 124 children.

Cunningham, who will join the flotilla, played a video showing a girl singing while planning her own funeral. The girl, Fatima, died four days ago, he said.

“What sort of world have we slid into where children are making their own funeral arrangements?” Cunningham said to reporters.

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when an attack by Hamas militants inside Israel claimed the lives of 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 251 people hostage. Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has so far killed more than 63,000 people and displaced virtually the whole population, according to the territory’s health ministry.

RIYADH: Israeli media claimed an airstrike has killed the spokesman of Hamas’ armed wing, Abu Obeida.

Israeli reports said Saturday’s strike targeted a key Hamas operative, with some senior Israeli officials claiming it was Abu Obeida. 

A Palestinian source told Al Arabiya on Sunday that the strike, reportedly on Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood, hit an apartment where Abu Obeida was staying. 

All residents of that apartment were also killed in the strike, the source said. 

The source added that members of Abu Obeida’s family and Hamas’s armed wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, “confirmed his death after examining the body.” 

There was no Hamas comment on Israeli claims about killing Abu Obeida so far. But the Palestinian militant group warned against spreading rumors regarding the killing of its members.

It said the rumors circulated by Israel were part of a “psychological war aimed at destabilizing the internal front.”

Abu Obeida has been a representative for the Qassam Brigades in media. He appeared in recordings published by Hamas’s armed wing by wrapping a red Palestinian keffiyeh around his head to hide his identity.  

He spoke in a concise and eloquent Arabic providing battleground updates since the ongoing Hamas-Israel war erupted in 2023.