More than 200 foreign citizens or citizens with dual nationality left the Gaza Strip this Thursday, through the Rafah border, next to Egypt, as well as nine injured Palestinians accompanied by nine family members, humanitarian sources said.
According to the director of the Egyptian Red Cross in Sinai, Raed Abdelnaser Amin, quoted by EFE, “225 foreigners, with dual nationality and Egyptians of Palestinian origin, arrived at the Rafah border from Palestine.”
He also highlighted that this Thursday nine injured people left the Gaza Strip accompanied by nine family members, with whom they arrived in Egyptian territory, among them the minor Abdullah al Kahil, who sent a message of help to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al Sisi.
The head of the Red Cross added that soon “842 foreigners are expected to leave Gaza, including 193 Egyptians of Palestinian origin and 649 foreigners from the United States, Belarus, Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bahrain and Kazakhstan, according to the list of those evacuated.”
According to the agreement for the expulsion of these citizens, people leaving Gaza have 72 hours to leave Egypt, a responsibility that falls on the embassies of the countries involved.
The Egyptian authorities, together with Israel, authorized the departure from the Gaza Strip of ten citizens flagged by Portugal, two of whom were Portuguese-Palestinian, the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported this Wednesday night.
The head of Portuguese diplomacy, João Gomes Cravinho, revealed that the 10 national citizens and their families were expected to leave today through the Rafah crossing, which will be open for the evacuation of foreign citizens from Gaza to Egypt, but in the middle of the afternoon he indicated difficulties at the border that were making the process difficult.
On October 7, fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007 and classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel – carried out an attack on Israeli territory of dimensions unprecedented since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, it left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians, around five thousand injured and more than 200 hostages.
In retaliation, Israel declared a war to “eradicate” Hamas, which began with food, water, electricity and fuel cuts in the Gaza Strip and daily shelling, followed by a ground offensive surrounding Gaza City.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which this Thursday turned 41 days and continues to threaten to spread throughout the Middle East region, has so far left 11,500 dead in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians, 29,800 injured, 3,250 missing under the rubble and more than 1.6 million displaced, according to the most recent report from local authorities.
Source: TSF
