Hundreds of foreign nationals allowed to go to Egypt from Gaza

After weeks of waiting, hundreds of people were allowed to leave the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the first of thousands of foreigners, aid workers and critically wounded patients who were expected to exit in the coming days.

By Wednesday night, buses had ferried 361 foreign nationals over the border to Egypt, and ambulances had carried 45 severely injured Palestinians, along with some of their family members, to Egyptian hospitals, according to Al Qahera, an Egyptian state-owned television channel. They left behind the destruction and the most immediate suffering wrought by the war between Israel and Hamas, the group that controls Gaza.

A crowd of people appeared to be waiting in a processing area at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt early Thursday morning, as hundreds of foreign nationals were expected to be allowed out of the territory in a second day of such departures, according to live streams provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.

Gaza’s authority on border crossings early on Thursday released the names of about 600 additional foreign nationals it said would be allowed to leave through the Rafah crossing into Egypt on the second day of such departures. The list comprised 400 Americans as well as people from Mexico, Hungary, Croatia, South Korea, Azerbaijan, Greece, Chad, Bahrain, Italy, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, Belgium and North Macedonia.