CAIRO: New aid flights arrived on Saturday in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where relief materials are being held until safe delivery into the nearby Gaza Strip can be secured, an official from the Red Crescent and an aid volunteer said.
Egypt says its side of the Rafah crossing that connects Sinai with the Gaza Strip remains open, though traffic has been halted for several days because of Israeli bombardments on the Palestinian side of the border.
A senior US State Department official said the United States had been working with Egypt, Israel and Qatar to open the crossing on Saturday.
Washington had been in contact with Palestinian-Americans inside Gaza, some of whom expressed a wish to leave via Rafah, but it was unclear if Palestinian Islamist group Hamas would allow access to the crossing, the official said.
Egyptian security forces have been reinforcing security on their side of the border, including moving concrete barriers, but reports that they were sealing off the crossing were incorrect, one Egyptian security source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The crossing is the main exit point for the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents that is not controlled by Israel. Israel and Egypt have upheld a blockade on the enclave, controlling the movement of goods and people since Hamas took control in 2007.
Israel’s military spokesperson said on Saturday that the border remains closed and any crossing to Egypt needed to be coordinated with Israel.
Two aid flights, including one from Turkiye, arrived at Sinai’s Al Arish airport, about 45 km (28 miles) from the Gaza border, bringing the total number of planes that have arrived this week carrying humanitarian relief for Gaza to at least five, the Red Cross official and the aid volunteer said.
The World Health Organization said a plane carrying trauma medicines and health supplies had landed.
“Every hour these supplies remain on the Egyptian side of the border, more girls and boys, women and men, especially those vulnerable or disabled, will die,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
There is alarm in Egypt over the prospect that residents in Gaza could be displaced by Israel’s siege and bombardment of the territory, launched in retaliation for the devastating incursion by Hamas militants.
Like other Arab states, it has said that Palestinians should stay on their lands as the war escalates, and that it is working to secure delivery of aid into the Gaza Strip.
More aid flights arrive in Egypt’s Sinai, awaiting passage to Gaza
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More aid flights arrive in Egypt’s Sinai, awaiting passage to Gaza
- US negotiating to open Gaza-Egypt route
- WHO head says delays to delivering aid will cost lives
- Two more aid flights arrive at Sinai’s Al Arish airport
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Israel says Hamas has not given ‘status of hostages’ it says ready to free
- A Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free
JERUSALEM: Israel said on Monday that Hamas had so far not provided the status of the 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.
“As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after a Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free in the first phase.
Shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank kills 3
- The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory
JERUSALEM: A shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people and wounded seven others on Monday, Israeli medics said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said those killed included two women in their 60s and a man in his 40s.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.
The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory. The identities of the attackers and those killed were not immediately known. The military said it was looking for the attackers, who fled.
Palestinians have carried out scores of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years. Israel has launched near-nightly military raids across the territory that frequently trigger gunbattle with militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 835 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
Some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority administering population centers. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in scores of settlements, which most of the international community considers illegal.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is raging with no end in sight, though there has reportedly been recent progress in long-running talks aimed at a ceasefire and hostage release.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border in a massive surprise attack nearly 15 months ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. They do not say how many of the dead were militants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced 90 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are enduring a cold, rainy winter in tent camps along the windy coast. At least seven infants have died of hypothermia because of the harsh conditions, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order in many areas make it difficult to provide desperately needed food and other assistance.
