dpa
Al-Arish, Egypt
The first trucks carrying badly needed aid supplies to the Gaza Strip moved through Egypt’s only border crossing with the enclave on Saturday after repeated delays.
They carried medical and other humanitarian assistance accompanied by Egyptian medical teams, an Egyptian official said.
Twenty aid trucks will go through the Egyptian Rafah crossing under an agreement between Egypt, Israel and the United States, Khaled Zayed, the head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, told dpa.
The aid is to be handed over to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which in turn will distribute it to Gazans, he added.
These are the first deliveries via the crossing since the war erupted two weeks ago between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip.
In reaction, dozens of activists at the site were seen in TV footage shouting in joy as the trucks started to move through the border facility.
Israel has imposed a “complete siege” on the Palestinian territory since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas militants, cutting off the densely populated Mediterranean coastal strip from food, fuel, medicines, water and other essential supplies, leading to fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.
A long line of trucks carrying relief supplies has been backed up at the Rafah crossing for days.
The United States and UN agencies had expected Rafah to open for aid on Wednesday. Egyptian and US officials cited the need for road repairs as one reason for the delay. Egyptians also blamed Israeli bombing on the Palestinian side of the border as making the mission unsafe.
Israel has been pounding Hamas targets by air and mobilized hundreds of thousands of military reservists ahead of an expected ground offensive in Gaza.
UN chief António Guterres, who visited the crossing on Friday, called the aid convoys a “lifeline” for suffering Gazan civilians.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said Saturday’s convoy “cannot be a one off.” “It is right and important that the first humanitarian aid is now coming to the people in Gaza,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on social media. “They need water, food and medicine - we won’t leave them alone.” Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets from Gaza toward Israel. Warning sirens blared in the Israeli port city of Ashdod, north of Gaza, on Saturday morning, according to the Israeli army.
There was initially no information on damage or casualties.
The towns and communities closest to the border have largely been evacuated to protect the civilian population. The coastal city of Ashkelon also received several rocket alerts on Friday night.
