Michele Kambas News

Ships carrying 332 tons of food for Gaza left Cyprus's Larnaca port on Saturday in a convoy which will reach the besieged enclave early next week, authorities said.It is the second shipment this month after Israel eased a 17-year naval blockade on the Gaza Strip to allow aid in from Cyprus, sourced by U.S. charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) for starving Palestinians.The aid will be taken to Gaza on a cargo ship and a barge towed by a salvage vessel, along with a tugboat carrying a support team in a journey which will take about 60 hours…

A ship transporting almost 200 tons of food to Gaza left a port in Cyprus early on Tuesday in a pilot project to open a new sea route for aid to a population on the brink of famine.The charity ship Open Arms sailed out of Larnaca port in Cyprus, towing a barge containing flour, rice and protein.The 200-mile (320 km) voyage across the eastern Mediterranean to Gaza with a heavy tow barge could take up to 2 days, Cypriot officials have said.The mission, funded mostly by the United Arab Emirates, is organised by U.S.

A ship carrying tonnes of food for Gaza remained docked in a Cyprus port on Sunday as preparations were underway to launch a yet untested maritime aid route to the enclave, where the United Nations estimates a quarter of the population faces starvation.The Open Arms, a salvage vessel, plans to tow a barge with 200 tonnes of food, mostly funded by the UAE. The supplies were sourced by charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), which is working with Spanish non-governmental organisation Proactiva Open Arms.WCK said it has another 500 tonnes of supplies in Cyprus…

Sustained attacks by Yemen's Houthis on vessels using Red Sea shipping lanes could have a "substantial" impact on economies and a knock-on effect on prices, a key Cypriot shipping industry group said on Thursday.Attacks by Houthis have disrupted a vital trade route, particularly of oil, as vessels access the Suez Canal via the Red Sea. Some shipping lines have been forced to divert vessels from the Red Sea to longer routes, threatening supply bottlenecks."Where countries heavily depend on raw materials…

Israel is prepared to let ships deliver aid to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip "immediately" as part of a proposed sea corridor from Cyprus, the Israeli foreign minister said on Sunday, naming four European countries as potential participants.Under the arrangement first suggested by Nicosia in November, cargo would undergo security inspection in the Cypriot port of Larnaca before being ferried to the Gaza coast, 370 km (230 miles) away, rather than through neighbouring Egypt or Israel.If the plan goes ahead…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly stopped over in Cyprus on Sunday where a Cypriot proposal to establish a maritime aid corridor to Gaza was discussed, Cypriot officials said.Blinken made the unannounced stopover over at Larnaca airport on his way to Turkey in a tour of the region.

Cruise ships heading to Israel have been diverted to Cyprus, while additional flights were arranged on Monday to repatriate Israelis or assist people wanting to leave Israel, aviation and shipping officials said.A cruise ship docked at Limassol port on Sunday, while a second on Monday, Port Manager Panayiotis Agathocleous told Cyprus's Ant1 TV station. A third was expected during the week, he said."We are ready to offer all assistance," Agathocleous said.Aviation officials said 11 extra inbound and outbound flights to Israel were arranged on Monday.

Rescuers scoured seas off Greece on Thursday in a massive search operation, as hopes dwindled of finding survivors of a shipwreck that killed at least 78 migrants in one of Europe's deadliest such disasters in recent years.Reports suggested hundreds of people had packed the fishing boat that capsized and sank early on Wednesday in deep waters about 50 miles (80 km) from the southern coastal town of Pylos, while being shadowed by the Greek coast guard. As dawn broke on Thursday, a coast guard vessel sailed into the nearby port city of Kalamata, transferring victims.

Cyprus wants to establish itself as a gateway from east Mediterranean gas resources to Europe via a shipping corridor of LNG carriers, its president said on Monday. Cyprus's new centrist government, which came to power in February, has cooled to the idea championed by its predecessors of an "EastMed" pipeline transferring gas to Europe.Instead, authorities now want to transport, via pipeline, natural gas from fields in the eastern Mediterranean to the island for use in domestic conventional power generation…

Cyprus is speaking to other European Union member states to shore up support for the shipping industry hit by sanctions on Russia, its shipping minister said on Friday.Cyprus has the third-largest shipping fleet in the EU after Malta and Greece. It has seen defections, or itself deflagged, about a fifth of its oil tanker fleet in recent months, connected one way or another to sanctions on Russia.The island's proposals include automatic extensions of so-called tonnage tax systems…

At least 16 people died when their boat overturned off the Greek island of Paros in the central Aegean Sea on Friday, in the third maritime disaster involving migrants this week, the country's coastguard said.Authorities scrambled a search and rescue operation overnight northwest of Paros. Air and sea assets were deployed to the area, the coastguard said.Greece is one of the main routes into the European Union for migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and beyond, though the flow has tapered off since 2015-2016…

Authorities in Turkey and Cyprus are on alert for any potential pollution from a 'sheen' of fuel floating across the Mediterranean from a spill in Syria, officials said.Fuel which seeped into the sea from a thermal station off the coast of Syria on August 23 has been snaking across the Eastern Mediterranean, but any potential impact on Cyprus will depend on currents.The latest satellite images of the region provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency showed the oil sheen east of Cyprus breaking down and dissolving, the Cyprus Fisheries and Marine Research Department said.The eastern Cyprus coastline, largely unspoilt, falls within two opposing jurisdictions; an area controlled by the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot government and a Turkish Cypriot breakaway state recognized on

Greece urged the European Union on Wednesday to reconsider its customs union with Turkey in response to Ankara's continued gas exploration in contested Mediterranean areas, deploring what it termed Ankara's "imperial fantasies."After meeting Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Nicosia, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said they all agreed that Ankara is "blatantly" violating international law."Turkey's leadership has fantasies of imperial behavior with aggressive behavior from Syria to Libya, Somalia to Cyprus, from the Aegean to the Caucus," he said.The EU should also take note of Turkey's 'many violations' of the EU-Turkey customs union accord…

Lebanon has asked Interpol to issue arrest warrants for the Russian captain and owner of the ship that brought the explosive material that detonated at Beirut port in August, killing nearly 200 people, state media reported on Thursday.About two months after the explosion that injured thousands and ravaged the Lebanese capital, questions remain about why and how the cargo was abandoned in Beirut.Authorities have blamed it on the huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate, used for fertilizer but also for explosives…

A Greek and a Turkish warship were involved in a mini-collision on Wednesday during a standoff in the eastern Mediterranean, a Greek defense source said, describing it as an "accident".Tensions have risen this week after Turkey sent a survey vessel to the region, escorted by warships, to map out sea territory for possible oil and gas drilling - an area where Turkey and Greece both claim jurisdiction. EU foreign ministers were due to discuss the issue on Friday.The Turkish Oruc Reis survey ship has been moving between Cyprus and the Greek island of Crete, shadowed by a number of Greek frigates.

In the murky story of how a cache of highly explosive ammonium nitrate ended up on the Beirut waterfront, one thing is clear—no one has ever publicly come forward to claim it.There are many unanswered questions surrounding last week's huge, deadly blast in the Lebanese capital, but ownership should be among the easiest to resolve.Clear identification of ownership, especially of a cargo as dangerous as that carried by the Moldovan-flagged Rhosus when it sailed into Beirut seven years ago, is fundamental to shipping, the key to insuring it and settling disputes that often arise.But Reuters interviews and trawls for documents across 10 countries in search of the original ownership of this 2…

Turkey dispatched a vessel to conduct a seismic survey in a disputed area in the eastern Mediterranean, a move which Greece said was illegal and is likely to heighten tensions between the two NATO allies.The advisory issued by the Turkish navy said the Oruc Reis vessel would operate in the area over the next two weeks.The two countries are at odds due to overlapping claims for hydrocarbon resources in the region. A similar advisory, or Navtex, last month prompted a dispute that was calmed after the intervention of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leading Turkey to agree a pause in operations.But President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday…

The chemicals that went up in flames in Beirut's deadliest peace-time explosion arrived in the Lebanese capital seven years ago on a leaky Russian-leased cargo ship that, according to its captain, should never have stopped there."They were being greedy," said Boris Prokoshev, who was captain of the Rhosus in 2013 when he says the owner told him to make an unscheduled stop in Lebanon to pick up extra cargo.Prokoshev said the ship was carrying 2,750 tonnes of a highly combustible chemical from Georgia to Mozambique when the order came to divert to Beirut on its way through the Mediterranean.The crew were asked to load some heavy road equipment and take it to Jordan's Port of Aqaba before resuming their journey onto Africa…

Cyprus has located and questioned a Russian man named in multiple news reports as the owner of the ship that carried a cargo of ammonium nitrate abandoned in Beirut and that exploded in a devastating fireball.A Cyprus police spokesman said an individual, who he did not name, was questioned at his home in Cyprus on Thursday afternoon."There was a request from the Interpol Beirut to locate this person and ask certain questions related to the cargo," the spokesman, Christos Andreou, told Reuters.

Eight people were abducted and one person injured during an armed raid overnight on a Greek-registered tanker anchored off Cameroon, Greek authorities said on Tuesday.Greece's shipping ministry said the Happy Lady tanker was two nautical miles off the port of Limboh in Cameroon when it was stormed by individuals who were armed.Five Greeks, two people from the Philippines and a Ukrainian were kidnapped and a Greek national injured, the ministry said in a statement.The tanker has a crew of 28.(Reporting By Michele Kambas; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Libya's internationally recognized government and Turkey have signed an agreement on maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea that could complicate Ankara's disputes over energy exploration with other countries.Turkey, which announced the accord and a deal on expanded security and military cooperation on Thursday, gave no details of their memorandum of understanding and did not specify where Turkish and Libyan waters meet.Greece dismissed the announcement as geographically…

Turkey said on Friday that an Iranian tanker at the centre of a confrontation between Washington and Tehran was headed to Lebanon after changing course several times, although Beirut said it was not informed of the plan.According to Refinitiv tracking data, the Adrian Darya, formerly called Grace 1, made a U-turn on Friday and headed for Turkey's Iskenderun port - 200 km (124 miles) north of Syria's Baniyas refinery, the tanker's suspected original destination.However, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the tanker, which was carrying 2 million barrels of oil when released at Gibraltar, was headed to "the main port in Lebanon."On the sidelines of a forum in Oslo…

Greece said on Tuesday it had had no request for an oil tanker at the centre of a row between Iran and the U.S. to dock at one of its ports, as Washington warned Greece against helping the vessel.The Adrian Darya 1 - formerly the Grace 1 - left Gibraltar on Aug 18. Ship tracking data on Tuesday showed the vessel was heading to the Greek port of Kalamata on the southern coast of the Peloponnese, and was scheduled to arrive on Aug. 26."The vessel is cruising at low speed and there is still no formal announcement that it will arrive at Kalamata," a Greek shipping ministry spokesman said.Reporting By Michele Kambas and George Georgiopoulos