Jan 23, 2008, 15:23 GMT
Rafah/Gaza City - Palestinian militants blew dozens of holes in the Gaza Strip-Egypt border fence Wednesday, prompting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to pour through the breach and stream into Egyptian to stock up with supplies made scarce by a suffocating Israeli siege of the salient.
The United Nations estimated in the mid-afternoon that some 350,000 Gazans had entered Egypt through the dozens of gaps blown in a wall and cut into barbed wire - witnesses said they heard as many as 17 explosions, and militants also brought up bulldozers to destroy the concrete border wall - in the 10 or so hours since the border was first holed.
Palestinian estimates put the number entering Egypt even higher, at about half a million.
Egyptian border guards did nothing to prevent the flow of people from making the approximately 50 kilometre journey to the Sinai town of al-Arish to buy food, fuel and other scarce supplies, including cigarettes.
President Hosni Mubarak said he allowed Palestinians to cross into Egypt Wednesday to 'to eat and buy food provisions then return home as long as they do not carry arms.'
Israel, alarmed that militants and weapons could enter the Strip through the now-porous border, said it expected Egypt to 'solve the problem' of the breached border, with a foreign ministry statement noting that 'it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly, according to signed agreements.'
On Wednesday, most of the Palestinians crossing back into the Strip were carrying much-needed provisions which had been in short supply throughout ught the months of the Israel siege.
The streets of al-Arish, as well as the Egyptian side of the divided border town of Rafah and nearby Sheikh Zweid, were filled with people buying what they needed, while Gazans from places as far from Rafah as Beit Hanoun, on the northern edge of the Strip, were also also making their way to the border, using whatever transport they could find.
Grocery shops and pharmacies in Rafah and al-Arish were reported to be running out of stock and queues were building up outside petrol stations.
The Egyptian authorities had reportedly closed the Suez Canal bridge, known as the Mubarak peace bridge, which links the Sinai peninsula to mainland Egypt.
The move was aimed at keeping Palestinians in the Sinai Peninsula and stopping them from streaming into other parts of Egypt, particularly Cairo.
'I am very happy to be in Arish for the first time. I am here to buy goods and food supplies for my family,' said Marwan Khalid, a student from Rafah.
'As soon as I heard about the opening of the border I hurried to come to Egypt. I have relatives in Arish. I will buy food and medicines. Then I am going home,' said Oum Salah, a housewife from Khan Younis.
A Hamas statement said that what happened at the border was 'a reflection of the level of strain caused by the siege, the pressure of the closure of the crossing points, which have taken our people to the point of an irreversible explosion.'
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, said Israel was responsible for the events on the border because of the 'unacceptable siege.'
Israel had first closed the Gaza border crossings in June 2006, after militants from the Strip staged a cross-border raid and snatched an Israeli soldier, who is still being held somewhere in the enclave.
The siege of Gaza was intensified in June last year, when Hamas gunmen routed forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas to seize complete security control of the Strip, and it was tightened even further last week after an upsurge in rockets and mortar attacks form the salient, with more than 130 projectiles launched at southern Israel over three days.
On Tuesday morning, Israel reopened two of its border crossings with the Gaza Strip to humanitarian aid and diesel fuel after nearly four days of a total lock-down.
The diesel was enough to keep Gaza's only local power plant running for one week, as well as generators used in hospitals.
But Israel has said it will keep a tight grip on the Strip until the rocket attacks end.
At least 60 people were injured in clashes Tuesday between and thousands of Hamas supporters, many of them women, protesting on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing, and Egyptian security forces who used water cannons and clubs to beat back the crowd trying to break through the border, and then firing a volley of live ammunition at the crowd, which fled.
One Palestinian militant was also seen firing his Kalashnikov over the heads of the civilian protesters at the Egyptian security forces.
Five of the wounded were injured by the live ammunition, including a Palestinian woman in critical condition after being shot in the head.
The Hamas-organized demonstrations began at the Rafah crossing point on Monday, with protesters calling for the border to be opened to allow Palestinian patients into Egypt for medical treatment.
Since Israel tightened the closure Friday, the rocket attacks have decreased somewhat, but on Tuesday militants still launched some 22 Gaza-made al-Quds and Nasser rockets and mortars from the Strip at Israeli towns and villages, a military spokeswoman said.
Gaza's power plant shut down for nearly 40 hours from Sunday evening, plunging some 800,000 Palestinians in Gaza City and its suburbs into darkness until the new diesel supplies arrived Tuesday.
An Israeli government spokesman, Yariv Ovadiah, confirmed Israel was now following a new policy, under which humanitarian aid and fuel would be allowed into Gaza periodically to avoid a humanitarian crisis, but in minimal amounts.
Before last week's surge in rocket attacks, Israel opened its border crossings with Gaza to larger amounts of basic necessities which 'allowed a much more normal life, but here we are trying to increase the pressure,' Ovadiah said.
'We don't want to punish the Palestinian people,' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'On the other hand we are still suffering rocket attacks every day. The situation is unbearable.'
Human rights groups, however, have condemned the closure as collective punishment.
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