Hundreds of foreigners have already been allowed to leave the Gaza Strip for Egypt. According to the Foreign Ministry in Cairo, thousands are still waiting. Meanwhile, fighting continued in the densely populated coastal strip.
According to Egypt, around 7,000 foreign nationals from 60 countries are waiting to leave the Gaza Strip. This was announced by the Foreign Ministry in Cairo. The ministry invited representatives of foreign embassies to a meeting in Cairo to provide information about the documents required for leaving the country and the logistics.
It is unclear whether the 7,000 are only foreign nationals or also Palestinians with a second passport. It is also unclear whether there are other foreigners in Gaza who do not want to leave. The ministry did not say how long the foreigners should leave the country or whether there was already an agreement to open the Rafah border crossing.
The Arab Emirates also want to take in the injured
On Wednesday, hundreds of foreign nationals and Palestinians with second passports left the sealed-off coastal area for the first time since the start of the Middle East war. There were also Germans among them. As the Egyptian Red Crescent confirmed to the dpa news agency, around 400 people crossed the border again today – 200 more are expected to follow. For the first time, injured Palestinians were also taken to Egyptian hospitals for treatment.
The United Arab Emirates also announced that it would treat the injured. Emirati President Mohammed bin Sajid has ordered the treatment of 1,000 Palestinian children from Gaza accompanied by their families, the state news agency WAM reported on Wednesday evening.
Gray areas: Built-up areas in the Gaza Strip
Fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip
Meanwhile, fighting continued overnight between Israeli soldiers and the militant Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The armed wing of the Islamist organization ruling the Gaza Strip, the Qassam Brigades, reported confrontations in the northwest of the coastal strip. They attacked soldiers there and southeast of the city of Gaza with anti-tank grenades.
The Israeli army said soldiers encountered terrorist cells that attacked with anti-tank missiles, explosive devices and hand grenades. There were therefore long battles in which the soldiers received support from artillery and the air force. “Dozens of terrorists” were killed. Hamas infrastructure was also destroyed. The military did not provide any information about possible injuries or casualties in its own ranks in the recent fighting. Hamas is also classified as a terrorist organization by the USA and the EU.
Hamas reports more deaths – UN worried
According to Hamas’s account, the number of deaths in Israeli attacks on the Jabalia refugee settlement in the Gaza Strip also increased. 195 people were killed within two days. In the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, 777 people were injured and 120 were still missing under the rubble, said the press service of Hamas, which is the government in the Gaza Strip. These figures cannot be independently verified. How ARD fact finder Pascal Siggelkow According to reports, Hamas has already corrected the number several times.
The United Nations had already expressed concern yesterday that the attack could be a war crime. “Given the high number of civilian casualties and the scale of destruction following the Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp, we have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could constitute war crimes,” the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner wrote for human rights in the short message service X, formerly Twitter.
More trucks reach Gaza
Overall, according to the UN, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worsening. As the Palestinian Red Crescent announced on Wednesday evening, another 55 trucks with urgently needed relief supplies had arrived. They brought water, food and medicine across the border from Egypt. This means that a total of 272 trucks have arrived in the sealed-off coastal area since the beginning of the war.
The delivery of fuel has not yet been approved by the Israeli authorities, said the UN emergency agency OCHA. This is urgently needed, among other things for the operation of life-saving devices. According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, 16 of a total of 35 hospitals in the coastal area could no longer treat patients due to a lack of fuel. Israel does not want to allow the import of fuel into the Gaza Strip because it fears that Hamas could use it for military purposes.
Israel is massively attacking targets in the Gaza Strip following the devastating Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, in which, according to Israel, around 1,400 people died and more than 240 hostages were taken. According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, more than 8,700 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip so far, including apparently many children and young people. Almost half of the densely populated Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents are under 18 years old. However, the death toll cannot be independently verified.
Conflict parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by the Palestinian and Israeli conflict parties cannot be directly verified by an independent body.