Egypt extends Rafah crossing opening for two days
Egypt has extended a three-day-long opening of its Rafah border crossing with the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip for two more days.
“Egyptian authorities have informed the Palestinian side that the terminal will remain open for two more days,” the Palestinian Authority’s border chief Nazmi Mehanna told Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency on Monday.
Egyptian authorities had lifted the crossing’s closure on Saturday for three days. According to the Gaza border authority, around 1,096 Palestinians transited through the crossing in the first two days.
Cairo had reportedly been exercising a stricter control regime over Rafah - the enclave's only land terminal that bypasses Israel - since the 2013, following the ouster in a military coup of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president.
Gaza has been blockaded by Tel Aviv since June 2007, which is a situation that has caused a decline in the standard of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.
Egypt has been accused of complicity with Israel in the Tel Aviv regime’s imposition of the siege by maintaining strict control over the land terminal.
Cairo has also been reported to have demolished nearly 1,430 underground tunnels between the country and the besieged coastal sliver over the past 18 months. The Egyptian army claimed on Sunday that the tunnels were "used by terrorists and criminals" to smuggle weapons to militants in the Sinai Peninsula.
A report by the World Food Program (WFP) in February 2014 revealed that the tunnels represented "the main supply and commercial trade route for goods into Gaza" since 2007.
HN/KA/HMV
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