US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has briefly stopped over in Cyprus on where a Cypriot proposal to establish a maritime aid corridor to Gaza was discussed, Cypriot officials said.

According to Reuters, Blinken made the unannounced stopover at Larnaca airport on his way to Turkey on a tour of the region. He met with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides on board his aircraft.

During the meeting there was a discussion on unfolding developments in the Middle East as well as Cyprus’s proposal for a dedicated, one-way maritime corridor of a sustained flow of humanitarian aid from Cyprus to civilians in Gaza, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said in a statement.

Cyprus, the closest European Union member state to the Middle East, has been talking to its Middle East neighbours and EU partners about establishing the corridor which would be exclusively used for humanitarian aid.

“Ships cannot approach the sea area off Gaza so we are talking to the United Nations which will handle the aid and not Hamas,” Christodoulides told reporters earlier on Sunday.