Egypt reopens border with Gaza for two days

Cairo, Mar 18 (Prensa Latina) Egypt reopened its Rafah border with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Wednesday for two days to enable students and the sick to move in and out, and Jordan sent 227 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza Strip through the West Bank.

Rafah border, the only one that bypasses Israel, opened for two days to allow the passage of Palestinian students and the sick, including thousands who were stuck on the Egyptian side for several days.

Security sources recalled the Rafah crossing has been largely closed since June 2006, when Gaza militants captured an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit in a deadly cross-border raid.

Since then, Tel Aviv obtained collaboration from El Cairo to tighten its blockade against Gaza Strip, where there are a million and half inhabitants surviving on foreign aid, particularly since Hamas seized control in June 2007.

‘Palestinian patients who finished their treatment at Egyptian hospitals and other humanitarian cases will be allowed to return back home,’ Egypt’s official MENA news agency quoted Palestinian embassy official Mohammed Arafat as saying on Monday.

Foreign passport holders, students studying outside the Palestinian territories and humanitarian cases will also cross into Egypt, Arafat said.

Egypt opens the crossing periodically to allow humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza, where more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed in a three-week Israeli onslaught in December and January.

Jordan has sent 293 caravans of humanitarian aid to alleviate the negative effects after a 22-day nonstop offensive by land, air and sea against the Strip.