Cairo: Trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip arrived on Tuesday at the only border crossing into the territory not controlled by Israel, a witness and Egyptian security sources said, after the U.S. said it was developing with Israel a plan for aid delivery.
Egypt says the Rafah crossing, a vital artery before the fighting and now a key route for desperately needed supplies into the Israeli-besieged Palestinian enclave, had not been officially closed but was made inoperable due to Israeli air strikes on the Gaza side.
On Monday, local media and Egyptian security sources said that Israel had struck the vicinity of the crossing in Gaza. Two of the sources said the aid deliveries were now waiting for the Gaza side of the border to open and for assurances of safe passage before entering the crossing.
Some 160 trucks left al-Arish in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula in the early hours of Tuesday, where hundreds of tonnes of aid has been awaiting an agreement on aid delivery, the witness told Reuters.
Israel began intense bombardment and siege of Gaza following a devastating assault by Islamist Hamas militants on Oct. 7.
The territory’s 2.3 million residents have been left without power, pushing health and water services to the brink of collapse, with fuel for hospital generators running low. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.
After nine hours of negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had agreed with Israel “to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza”.
Blinken said both countries were concerned that Hamas would seize or destroy the aid. This concern, along with fears that aid would be used as cover for weapons, had hindered a planned delivery on Monday, two Egyptian security sources said.
An understanding was reached that the aid would be delivered to specific secure locations in Gaza under monitoring, the Egyptian security sources said, in exchange for limited evacuations of foreign passport holders.
Another security source said Egypt had repaired the roads within the crossing that had been damaged by Israeli strikes.
(Reporting by Amr Abdallah Dalsh, Mohamed Hendawy, and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia, Humeyra Pamuk in Tel Aviv; Writing by Enas Alashray and Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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