There is “no artificial holdup” in the transfer of the 1,200 tonnes of humanitarian aid sent from Cyprus to Gaza earlier this week, presidential press office director Victor Papadopoulos said on Friday, with the ship on which it was loaded still waiting off the coast of Israel.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail, he said the ship had arrived at the anchorage point off the coast of the Israeli town of Ashdod on Thursday night and is now waiting to be allowed into the town’s port.

However, he said, as the port’s workers do not work on Fridays or Saturdays, the ship is expected to dock and be unloaded on Sunday at the earliest.

“There is no evidence of any artificial holdup in the transfer of aid … Hopefully, it will be unloaded on Sunday,” he said.

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Meanwhile, foreign ministry spokesman Theodoros Gotsis concurred with Papadopoulos’ assessment of the situation, telling the Cyprus Mail that “there is no problem” regarding the transfer of aid.

“As you know, Friday and Saturday are the weekend in Israel, so they are not working at the port, but after the weekend, we expect that the ship will dock and be unloaded and the aid will make it to Gaza,” he said.

Gotsis had initially expressed hope that the ship would be unloaded as early as Wednesday evening, though this has not transpired. Satellite data shows that the ship, a Panamanian-flagged vessel named Henke, is as of 11am on Friday located west of Haifa, a city in Israel’s far north.

The same data showed that three cargo ships – the MSC Laura, the Jasim, and the Stellar Alazani – all docked at the port of Ashdod in the early hours of Friday morning, having travelled from the French port of Le Havre, and the Egyptian ports of Arish and Alexandria respectively.

Earlier on Friday, Papadopoulos had told CyBC radio that the government is “monitoring the situation” and that it is “is aware of the difficulties” regarding the transfer of aid to Gaza,

He added that it expects that “any problems which exist will be overcome” and that the aid will reach the people of Gaza.

“We collected the material from various donors, and we contributed, we created the mechanisms, we sent the mission. The facts on the ground, as they develop both inside Gaza and outside of Gaza, as you know, are generally changeable. The issue of security is a complex one, and the safety of the people who are delivering the aid comes first,” he said.

The news of the ship’s non-arrival comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is ready to approve the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)’s plans to take control of Gaza City, while also issuing instructions for negotiations to begin for the release of hostages taken by Hamas during a coordinated attack on October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, IDF chief Eyal Zamir confirmed that his force is “advancing with the efforts towards operations in Gaza City”.

On Thursday evening, a member of the Reviving Gaza aid project had told British television channel Sky News that the humanitarian situation in Gaza City is “indescribable” and “so hard that it was beyond what a human can endure”.

She said her family has been displaced upwards of ten times, and that people are risking their lives to search for humanitarian aid at collection points, amid reports that hundreds of Palestinians have been shot dead or otherwise wounded by IDF soldiers at aid distribution points.

“People go there knowing that they are risking their lives, but they have no choice, because their children or their mothers are asking for food. If they didn’t die because of bombing, they would die due to starvation. People choose to go there even though people there get bombed and die there, so it is not humanitarian at all,” she said.

The ship set sail from Cyprus on Monday night, with the foreign ministry saying that the shipment primarily consists of “food items, particularly to cover the nutritional needs of children”.

It added that its “consistent position” on the matter of Gaza is “the urgent need for an increased, safe, and unhindered flow of humanitarian aid, on a massive scale, to the civilian population”.

Later on Tuesday, UN office for project services (Unops) executive director Jorge Moreira da Silva described the shipment from Limassol as “a crucial step in alleviating suffering in Gaza”.

“We need [a] rapid, unhindered, and safe flow of humanitarian aid for all civilians in need,” he said.