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.
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
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.
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.
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. He met with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides on board his aircraft.