Middle East News
Hundreds enter Egypt from Gaza via Rafah crossing (2nd Roundup)
By DPA
May 10, 2008, 12:52 GMT

Gaza- Egypt Saturday re-opened its border with the Gaza Strip for three days to allow Palestinians stranded on both sides to cross, witnesses and Hamas security sources said.

A few hundred Palestinian patients gathered at the Rafah crossing where there were at least 10 ambulances carrying very sick people.

Hamas policemen were deployed at the Rafah crossing while Egypt took over the coordination at the middle and the exit terminal of the crossing.

The border is being opened without the presence of the European Union monitors and the Presidential Guard forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who withdrew from the area in June 2007 when Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip by force.

The last opening of the border was in January when Hamas militants blew it up, allowing Gazans to cross freely into Sinai.

On Saturday, the crossing were being opened from 9:30 to 16:00 for patients with bookings at Egyptian hospitals. On Sunday, Palestinians, who arrived in Gaza before June and became stranded when Hamas took over the region, will be allowed to leave.

On Monday the crossing is set to be open for Palestinians wishing to travel into Gaza.

Also Saturday, Abbas' Fatah movement welcomed Friday's call from Hamas for national reconciliation.

'Reconciliation is a national and a strategic necessity for the Palestinian people,' said Qadoura Fares, a leading member of Fatah.

Exiled Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal called for dialogue and reconciliation Friday at a speech he delivered in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.

However, Fares said that Mashaal's call 'requires important acts to ease the dialogue's process.' He was referring to a condition by Abbas that Hamas must end its control of the Gaza Strip before any talks start.

Israeli forces Saturday made incursions into two areas of the southern Gaza Strip, wounding two people in a search for Palestinian militants.

A force of about 13 tanks and bulldozers reportedly withdrew from the al-Faraheen area east of Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip after a hours-long military operation that included a ground incursion, witnesses said.

According to hospital officials, two people were moderately injured during the incursion, one of whom was a fighter injured in an airstrike targeting a gathering of militants.

The Israeli army is still operating in Rafah city after penetrating a distance of 1.5 kilometres into the southern Gaza Strip town.

Bulldozers and tanks were positioned near the closed airport in the city.

The incursion comes after five Palestinians were killed before dawn on Saturday in two separate Israeli airstrikes on Hamas military posts in the two southern Gaza towns, medics and Hamas sources said.

Israeli aircraft struck a post belonging to Hamas naval police west of Khan Younis, and then struck another post belonging to Hamas' armed wing in the town of Rafah, Hamas sources said.

Mo'aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian health ministry, told reporters that three were killed in Khan Younis and two were killed in Rafah by Israeli air-to- ground missiles.

The two Israeli air raids came shortly after Hamas armed wing, al- Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility for killing an Israeli in a mortar attack on southern Israel.

A 48-year-old Israeli woman was killed and three wounded in the Friday afternoon attack on Kibbutz Kfar Azza near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, an Israeli army spokesman told Israeli Radio.

Al-Qassam Brigades in a leaflet said its militants had launched three mortar shells at the town.

Following Saturday's Israeli raids, Palestinian militants launched homemade Qassam rockets at the southern Israeli town of Sderot. According to media reports, a synagogue in the town was struck by one missile, while others struck a college building.

A Hamas commander Saturday said the armed group's missiles had become more accurate and were better at inflicting damage.

The commander whose name was withheld was quoted on the Hamas website as saying that the al-Qassam Brigade had developed its rockets.

'The missiles are more accurate and cause more pain to the enemy,' he said.