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A flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and activists, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, prepared Sunday to leave from Barcelona to try to “break the illegal siege of Gaza”, organisers said.The vessels will set off from the Spanish port city to “open a humanitarian corridor and end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people”, said the Global Sumud Flotilla — sumud is the Arabic term for “resilience”.The group defines itself on its website as saying it is an independent organisation which has no affiliation either to any government or political party.Dozens of boats were to leave port at 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) with hundreds of people aboard, among them activists from dozens of countries including Irish actor Liam Cunningham and Spain’s Eduard Fernandez.Also aboard were European lawmakers and public figures including former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau.The flotilla is expected to arrive at the war-ravaged coastal enclave in mid-September.”The question here today is not why we are sailing. This story is not at all about the mission that we are about to embark upon,” said Thunberg, having told AFP the goal was to bring in aid and open up a humanitarian corridor to break an “illegal” and “inhuman” blockade of Gaza.  “The story here is about Palestine. The story here is how people are being deliberately deprived of the very basic means to survive. The story here is how the world can be silent,” she told reporters.For Cunningham, “the fact that you guys are here, and the flotilla is happening, is an indication of the world’s failure to uphold international law and humanitarian law, and it is a shameful, shameful period in the history of our world. And we should be collectively ashamed.”Organisers say that dozens of other vessels are expected to leave Tunisian and other Mediterranean ports on September 4 to join the aid mission.Activists will also stage simultaneous demonstrations and other protests in 44 countries “in solidarity with the Palestinian people”, Thunberg, part of the flotilla’s steering committee, earlier wrote on Instagram.”This will be the largest solidarity mission in history, with more people and more boats than all previous attempts combined,” Brazilian activist Thiago Avila told journalists in Barcelona last week.”We understand that this is a legal mission under international law,” Portuguese lawmaker Mariana Mortagua, who will join the mission, told journalists in Lisbon last week.- Previous attempts -Israel has already blocked two attempts by activists to deliver aid by ship to Gaza, in June and July.In June, 12 activists on board the sailboat Madleen, from France, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands, were intercepted by Israeli forces 185 kilometres (115 miles) west of Gaza.Its passengers, who included Thunberg, were detained and eventually expelled.In July, 21 activists from 10 countries were intercepted as they tried to approach Gaza in another vessel, the Handala.The Spanish government says it will “deploy all of its diplomatic and consular protection to protect our citizens” sailing with the flotilla, the country’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Saturday.Madrid last year recognised Palestine as an independent state.The humanitarian situation in Gaza has worsened in recent weeks. The United Nations declared a state of famine in the territory this month, warning that 500,000 people face “catastrophic” conditions.The war in Gaza was triggered by an unprecedented cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas into Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the death of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,371 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The UN considers those figures reliable.

The Red Cross warned on Saturday that any Israeli attempt to evacuate Gaza City would put residents at risk, as Israel’s military tightened its siege on the area ahead of a planned offensive.Gaza’s civil defence agency said that since dawn Israeli attacks had killed 66 people in the territory already devastated by nearly 23 months of war.”It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions,” International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement. The dire state of shelter, healthcare and nutrition in Gaza meant evacuation was “not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances”. Israel is under increasing pressure to end its offensive in Gaza where the great majority of the population has been displaced at least once and the United Nations has declared a famine.But despite the calls at home and abroad for an end to the war, the Israeli army is readying itself for an operation to seize the Palestinian territory’s largest city and relocate its inhabitants. On Saturday, at a rally in Tel Aviv demanding the negotiated release of the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza, captives’ families warned the impending offensive could imperil their lives. The Israeli military has declared Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone”, without the daily pauses in fighting that have allowed limited food deliveries elsewhere.The military did not call for the population to leave immediately, but a day earlier COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it was making preparations “for moving the population southward for their protection”.- ‘Shaken the earth’ -Gaza’s civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP 66 people had been killed in Israeli bombing since dawn.The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the figure.Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency or the Israeli military.Bassal said 12 people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit “a number of displaced people’s tents” near a mosque in the al-Nasr area, west of Gaza City.The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Umm Imad Kaheel, who was nearby at the time, said children were among those killed in the strike, which had “shaken the earth”.”People were screaming and panicking, everyone running, trying to save the injured and retrieve the martyrs lying on the ground,” the 36-year-old said.The civil defence agency said 12 people were killed by Israeli fire as they waited near food distribution centres in the north, south and centre.A journalist working for AFP on the northern edge of Gaza City reported he had been ordered to evacuate by the army, adding conditions had become increasingly difficult, with gunfire and explosions nearby. Abu Mohammed Kishko, a resident of the city’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, told AFP the bombardments the previous night had been “insane”.”It didn’t stop for a second, and we didn’t sleep all night,” the 42-year-old said.- Fears for hostages – The government’s plans to expand the war have also drawn opposition inside Israel, where many fear they will jeopardise the lives of the remaining hostages.The Israeli prime minister’s office said on Saturday the remains of the second of two hostages recovered from Gaza this week have been identified as belonging to the student Idan Shtivi.The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group said the return of Idan Shtivi’s body represented “the closing of a circle and fulfils the State of Israel’s fundamental obligation to its citizens”.Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, told the Tel Aviv rally that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “chooses to occupy the Gaza Strip instead of the current outline for a deal, it will be the execution of our hostages and dear soldiers”.Earlier in August, Hamas agreed to a framework for a truce and hostage release deal but Israel has yet to give an official response. The Israeli army, whose troops have been conducting ground operations in Zeitoun for several days, said two of its soldiers had been wounded by an explosive device “during combat in the northern Gaza Strip”.It also said it had “struck a key Hamas terrorist in the area of Gaza City” without elaborating on the identity of the target. Hamas’s October 2023 attack, which triggered the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.Of the 251 hostages seized during the attack, 47 are still being held in Gaza, around 20 of whom are believed to be alive.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,371 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.