The first injured Gazans were evacuated to Egypt through the Rafah crossing on Wednesday under a deal brokered by Qatar and were being examined by medical teams who were directing them to hospitals, an Egyptian medical source said.
Egypt has prepared a field hospital in Sheikh Zuweid, 15 km (9 miles) from Rafah, and also plans to direct some patients to a permanent hospital there, to one in the nearby town of Al-Arish or further afield in the city of Ismailia, depending on the seriousness of their condition.
Under the deal brokered between Egypt, Israel and Hamas, 81 wounded people and an initial list of 500 foreign passport holders were expected to be allowed out of the Gaza Strip in the coming days, according to sources in several countries.
The limited evacuations come more than three weeks into a total blockade of Gaza by Israel, which has been bombarding the Palestinian enclave and has sent in ground troops in response to an attack by Hamas fighters on Israel on Oct. 7.
Nahed Abu Taeema, director of the Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip, told Reuters 19 critically injured patients from his hospital would be among the 81 being evacuated to Egypt.
“Those require advanced surgeries that can’t be done here because of the lack of capabilities, especially women and children,” said Abu Taeema.
A list of foreign passport holders who would be allowed to leave Gaza had been agreed between Israel and Egypt, and relevant embassies had been informed, a Western official said.
Britain’s foreign ministry said it understood the Rafah crossing would be open for time-limited periods to allow specific groups of foreign nationals and the seriously wounded to leave, and that it was likely the departure of British nationals would take place in stages over the coming days.
There was no confirmation of whether evacuations of foreign passport holders had begun.
Field hospital
Live Reuters footage of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing showed ambulances coming and going. At one point, it showed a couple with children putting suitcases into the trunk of a car, but it was not immediately possible to confirm whether the family were being evacuated.
The Hamas gunmen who attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 300 soldiers and 1,100 civilians, and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
Israeli strikes on Gaza since then have killed at least 8,525 Palestinians, including 3,542 children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
The precise timeline of the limited evacuations was not confirmed.
One Egyptian security source said up to 500 foreign passport holders would pass through the Rafah crossing on Wednesday, of whom 200 were already waiting on the Palestinian side in the morning.
A second source with knowledge of the deal said not all 500 were expected to make it out on Wednesday.
Medical sources in Egypt’s Sinai region, bordering Gaza, said a field hospital of four tents, each containing 20 beds, and 12 medical caravans had been set up in Sheikh Zuweid.
Local hospitals in Sheikh Zuweid and Al-Arish were also preparing to admit Gazan patients, with more difficult cases expected to be sent to Ismailia, the sources said.
A source at the border said 40 ambulances were at the crossing to take part in evacuation operations.
In addition, 70 aid trucks were in the Rafah area, going through the process of checks required before they enter Gaza under an existing agreement with Israel that has allowed a trickle of aid into the enclave over the past 10 days.
The Rafah crossing, controlled by Egypt, is the main entrance and exit point to Gaza from Egypt and is in a region tightly controlled by the Egyptian military, which battled an Islamist insurgency there that peaked after 2013 and has now been largely suppressed.
With Egypt wary of insecurity near the border with Gaza, only people who have obtained security clearance from Egyptian authorities are allowed close to the Rafah crossing.
(Reporting by Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan and Nafisa Eltahir in Cairo, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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