The recovery at the Rafah crossing and Egyptian movements to provide further aid are notable

Aid continues to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing, with a notable increase on the third day of the temporary humanitarian truce, which began on Friday morning and included a prisoner exchange and the entry of more aid and fuel. truck on the Strip. According to the Palestinian spokesman at the Rafah crossing, 160 aid trucks, including 4 gas trucks and 3 fuel trucks, had entered the Gaza Strip as of midday on Sunday.

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Dia Rashwan, head of the Egyptian Information Service, revealed the volume of medical aid brought to the Gaza Strip on Saturday evening, which amounted to 2,675 tons, while the volume of food aid amounted to 9,621 tons, and the volume of water has reached 7,047 tons. tons, as well as 82 pieces of water, tents and tarpaulins, as well as 1,992 tons of other relief materials.

Rashwan indicated, in a statement, that 788 tons of fuel were transported on Saturday evening, underlining that the total number of trucks that crossed the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip reached 2,056 trucks during this period.

The head of the State Information Service noted that Egypt received during this period 353 injured Gazans, accompanied by 292 people, as well as the passage of 8,514 foreign and dual citizens and 1,256 Egyptians from the Rafah crossing.

During the truce, the Rafah crossing has seen a resumption of aid movement, as well as the reception of foreign citizens wishing to leave the Gaza Strip, and the entry of Palestinian volunteers returning to the Gaza Strip.

International aid also continues to arrive through Al-Arish airport, which received 5 planes on Sunday, including 3 from Qatar, one from Saudi Arabia and another from Belgium, in preparation for transporting their cargo to the Gaza Strip .

For his part, Essam Abdel Rahman, director of the media center of the “Good Makers” Foundation, a member of the “Egyptian National Alliance for Civil and Development Work”, confirmed that “there are intense movements in the various institutions of the coalition, which includes 34 Egyptian charitable organizations, to meet the growing needs of the residents of the Gaza Strip, in addition to the continued influx of international aid.”

Abdel Rahman explained to Asharq Al-Awsat that the implementation of the humanitarian truce has had a positive impact on the increase in the number of humanitarian trucks entering Gaza daily, stressing that the number of trucks since they started entering the Strip on October 21 last year ranged between 13 and 20. Trucks, then the number increased under Egyptian pressure to 80 trucks before the truce, and after its implementation, about 230 trucks were brought per day, including food, medical supplies , blankets and clothes to face the winter weather conditions on the Strip.

He explained that more than 600 trucks are currently queuing in front of the Rafah crossing, waiting their turn to enter the Gaza Strip, underlining that the “National Alliance for Civil Action and Development”, in coordination with other charitable and relief institutions, “is ready to meet all the needs of our brothers in Gaza”, and the number of trucks can be doubled. If this is agreed and entry procedures are facilitated, the pace of fundraising from various Egyptian governorates will increase In this regard, he noted that charities have seen what he called an “unprecedented” demand for donations, some of which come from poor villages, as well as numerous individual initiatives.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced on Sunday that UN member states have contributed approximately $256 million in response to the urgent appeal regarding the Gaza Strip. The office said the amount paid constitutes only about 21% of the requested response, or $1.2 billion.

Earlier this month, the United Nations and its partners issued an urgent call for the implementation of the response plan to support 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip and half a million in the occupied West Bank, targeting sectors nutrition, health and safety, shelter, education, protection, coordination and others.