Middle East
400 more foreigners leave Gaza Strip for Egypt
Palestinians with dual nationality register to leave Egypt at the border crossing in Rafah. photo
© Hatem Ali/AP
In addition to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, foreigners are also stuck in the Gaza Strip. Thanks to an agreement brokered by Qatar, hundreds more of them can now pass through the Rafah border crossing.
Around 400 foreigners and Palestinians with dual nationality have it Leaving Gaza Strip for Egypt. They arrived in the Egyptian part of the Rafah border crossing on Thursday, as the Egyptian Red Crescent confirmed to the German Press Agency. In addition, 200 additional foreign passport holders are scheduled to leave the country today.
According to a list, around 400 Americans as well as people from Switzerland, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Croatia, Mexico, South Korea and other countries should leave the country. In the transit area they completed formalities for entry into Egypt, said Raed Abdel Nasser, secretary general of the Egyptian Red Crescent in North Sinai. The Palestinian border authority had asked them to wait at the border crossing.
According to Egypt, a total of around 7,000 foreign nationals from 60 countries are waiting to leave the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry invited representatives of foreign embassies to a meeting in Cairo to provide information about the documents required to enter Egypt and the logistics. It remains unclear whether there are other foreigners in Gaza who do not want to leave.
As a result of the devastating Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th, Israel is massively attacking targets in the Gaza Strip and has sealed off the densely populated coastal strip. The United Nations speaks of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. About 1.4 million people have been displaced by the fighting inside the Gaza Strip.
People with German passports also left the country
On Wednesday, several hundred foreigners and Palestinians with second passports left the sealed-off coastal area for the first time since the beginning of the Gaza war. The UN emergency relief office OCHA spoke of around 350 people. There were also Germans among them. There were no German citizens on the list on Thursday.
Qatar had agreed on the departures together with the USA, Egypt, Israel and Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip, as a person familiar with the talks told the German Press Agency. “This is a separate deal unrelated to the negotiations for the release of hostages held by Hamas,” the person said. Negotiations about opening the border had been going on since the beginning of the war, it was said.
In the Hamas-led terrorist attack on the Israeli border area on October 7, around 240 people were kidnapped into the Gaza Strip, including many foreigners.