Egypt agrees to allow first aid trucks into Gaza as Palestinians reel from hospital blast

Egypt has agreed to allow aid trucks into Gaza, as anger rises globally over Israel’s siege of the isolated enclave in response to the brutal, coordinated Hamas attacks nearly two weeks ago.

The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israel has sparked growing protests across the Middle East and heightened fears that the war could spiral into a wider regional conflict.

Speaking on his way back from a visit to Israel, United States President Joe Biden said his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had agreed to open the Rafah Crossing into Gaza for humanitarian aid – the only one not controlled by Israel.

Up to 20 trucks from an aid convoy waiting for days at the closed border gate would be allowed into Gaza, said Biden. The roads near the crossing, pocked with craters from Israeli airstrikes, will have to be fixed before the trucks can pass, Biden said. He added that work could be done over eight hours on Thursday before the first aid deliveries on Friday.

“We’re negotiating with the parties to make sure that we can get humanitarian goods going in and right now we’re in the process of those negotiations. We’re trying to get them in as soon as can,” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told CNN on Wednesday.

It’s also not clear how much of an impact the initial delivery will make for Gazan civilians caught up in a humanitarian catastrophe that the World Health Organization says is spiraling out of control and impacting hundreds of thousands of people.

“We hope it’s not a non-starter,” regional WHO representative Richard Brennan said Thursday of the aid deal, adding that there were “a lot of complexities to getting this aid operation going.”

“This is not a sprint. This is just the start. This is a marathon. An absolute marathon,” he said, adding that the goal was to get up to 100 trucks of aid distributed per day.

“We’re hearing figures now that suddenly people only have three liters of clean water per person per day, said Brennan, adding that at “absolute minimum” people need 15 liters for drinking, cooking and basic hygiene.

Located in Egypt’s north Sinai, the Rafah Crossing is the sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. It falls along an 8-mile (12.8-kilometer) fence that separates Gaza from the Sinai desert, and has been tightly controlled on each side of the border for years.

The decision to open the crossing followed several days of deliberations, despite pressure from the US that Egypt do so. Egypt initially said it won’t allow refugees to flood its territory, has instead insisted that Israel allow it to deliver aid to Gazans, and expressed concerns that Israeli air strikes could hit aid convoys.

The talks between the two leaders focused “on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and ways to facilitate the implementation of humanitarian aid,” according to a statement from the Egyptian president’s office.

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