Around 30 boats stocked with food and medicine, as well as prominent leftist activists and politicians, disembarked on Sunday from the Catalan city of Barcelona with the intention of reaching the Gaza Strip.
However,
according to Spain’s ABC news, they were forced to return to harbour just hours later after the captains decided that the windy conditions represented a safety risk.
“Due to unsafe weather conditions, we conducted a sea trial and then returned to port to allow the storm to pass,” the group said on Monday in a statement
reported by the
Daily Mail.
“This meant delaying our departure to avoid risking complications with the smaller boats.”
It comes amid claims that Israel is blocking aid shipments to Gaza. Jerusalem has rejected such assertions and has blamed the radical Islamist Hamas terrorists for disrupting aid shipments to the Palestinians under their control.
Among those on board the so-called flotilla were former leftist Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau and Swedish climate doomer activist Greta Thunberg.