A first boat loaded with 200 tonnes of food aid is making slow progress towards the Gaza Strip as efforts grew to bring more humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian territory besieged by Israel, AFP reports.

The main UN aid agency in Gaza said an Israeli strike a day earlier hit one of its warehouses in the southern city of Rafah, killing an employee, although Israel later claimed a Hamas fighter was killed in the rocket strike.

Donor nations, aid agencies and charities pushed on with efforts to rush food to the territory of 2.4 million people, where famine looms after more than five months of war.

Mediation efforts have so far failed to secure a new truce in the conflict triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant vowed again that Israeli forces “will reach every location” in their mission to destroy Hamas.

The Spanish charity vessel Open Arms left Cyprus for Gaza on Tuesday, towing a barge with 200 tonnes of aid in the first voyage along a planned maritime corridor to Gaza. It was moving slowly south off the coast of Israel, according to specialist website Marine Traffic.

However, airdrops and efforts to open a maritime corridor were “no alternative” to land deliveries because they could only provide a fraction of the aid needed, 25 organisations, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, said in a statement Wednesday.