The first of around 90 seriously injured Palestinians were brought from the Gaza Strip to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing. A field hospital is being built for them in the north of the Sinai Peninsula.
According to Egyptian media and an Egyptian official, a first group of injured Palestinians has left the Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. The injured were taken across the border in ambulances, it was said. In view of the Israeli bombings, Egypt had announced that it would take in and treat injured people from the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian television channels showed footage of ambulances arriving on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing. A total of around 90 seriously injured Palestinians are to be taken to Egyptian facilities for medical treatment. On the Palestinian side of the border crossing, a journalist from the AFP news agency observed at least 40 ambulances, each with two injured people, arriving at the Rafah border crossing to travel from there to Egypt.
Injured people should primarily go to a field hospital
The injured are reportedly being taken to a field hospital in the town of Sheikh Suweid, around 15 kilometers from Rafah, as well as to a hospital in El Arish and, in the most complicated cases, in Cairo.
The spokesman for the health ministry in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the militant Islamist Hamas, told AFP that a list of a total of 4,000 injured people had been sent to Egypt. The injured needed care that could not be provided in the Gaza Strip. Hamas had previously stated that Egypt had agreed to take in 81 seriously injured people.
The decision to admit injured people from the Gaza Strip came hours after an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, in which at least 50 people were killed and 150 injured, according to Israel and the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Egypt had initially spoken out against accepting people from Gaza. The Egyptian government fears that the conflict could spread to the Nile country and beyond. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had instead suggested that Israel accommodate the Palestinians in the Negev.
Rafah is the Gaza Strip’s only border crossing not controlled by Israel. It is considered the most important crossing point to the outside world for the residents of Gaza. It was opened to people on Wednesday for the first time since Hamas’ major attack on Israel on October 7th.
Several hundred people with foreign passports or dual citizenship have so far arrived in Egypt from the Gaza Strip, reports said ARD correspondent Gabriele Dunkel. However, it is unclear how long the Rafah border crossing will remain open.
According to information from the Reuters news agency and US media, a corresponding agreement was reached through Qatar’s mediation and is supported by Egypt, Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas.
The US government expressed the hope that US citizens would also be able to leave the Gaza Strip. “We hope that any agreement to get people out would also create the possibility for US citizens or their families and other foreign nationals to get out,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in Washington.