Israel to provide safe passage for foreigners to leave Gaza

Egypt, Israel and the United States have agreed to allow foreigners in Gaza to pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, a senior Egyptian official says.

The official said on Saturday that Israel has agreed to refrain from striking areas the foreigners would pass through on their way out of the besieged Palestinian territory. He said Qatar also was involved in the negotiations and the participants received also approval from the Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

A second official at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing point said they received "instructions" to reopen it on Saturday afternoon for foreigners coming from Gaza. The first official said negotiations were still underway to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza through the crossing point. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief media. Israel has ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Palestinians scrambled to flee northern Gaza on Saturday after the Israeli military ordered nearly half the population to evacuate south and carried out limited ground forays ahead of an expected land offensive a week after Hamas' bloody, wide-ranging attack into Israel.


The UN has said such a rapid exodus would cause untold human suffering, with hospital patients and others unable to relocate.

Families in cars, trucks and carts packed with possessions crowded a main road heading away from Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer the small, besieged territory.