Free Gaza movement launching fifth voyage to Gaza Strip (Extra)

Dec 18, 2008, 12:40 GMT

Gaza City - Western pro-Palestinian campaigners will set sail to the Gaza Strip in a fifth attempt to break Israel' economic blockade of the enclave, a Palestinian official said Thursday.

A ship of the US-based Free Gaza movement, the Dignity, is scheduled to leave the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Friday afternoon and due to arrive in Gaza on Saturday.

It will be carrying representatives of aid organizations, human rights activists and journalists, said Jamal al-Khodary, a Palestinian lawmaker who leads a committee against the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The Free Gaza movement, which has made four such voyages to Gaza since August, said the ship would be sending another ton of medicine, baby formula and gifts to the strip, donated by Qatar. Two Qatari envoys would be accompanying the supplies.

Al-Khodary said the campaigners will visit hospitals, schools and farms in Gaza and be briefed about the effects of the Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza since June 2007.

Despite initial warnings, Israel did not intercept the earlier boats sent to the strip by the Free Gaza, after they underwent security checks in Cyprus.

Last month however, Israel turned back a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tonnes of aid. Israel and Libya are enemy states.

Al-Khodary said a Lebanese boat is also expected to sail to Gaza in early January.

Israel imposed its blockade on the Gaza Strip in response to near daily rocket attacks at its southern towns and villages. It tightened the blockade when Hamas seized sole control of the salient in June 2007, stepped up the rocket fire and abducted an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid who is still behind held in the strip.