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JERUSALEM — A small group of injured Palestinians was permitted to leave Gaza early Wednesday and receive medical care in Egypt, as Palestinian officials and medical workers said that Israel carried out another deadly strike on the Jabalya refugee camp, the third in less than 24 hours.
The passage of the injured Palestinians to Egypt marked the first time residents of Gaza have been allowed to leave the enclave since the start of conflict between Israel and Hamas more than three weeks ago. Hundreds of foreign passport holders in Gaza were also set to depart, as part of a deal brokered by Qatar to facilitate the evacuations, a person briefed on the arrangement said.
The trickle of movement Wednesday — benefiting the smallest fraction of the thousands of Palestinians needing urgent care — repeated a pattern that has persisted for weeks, as a smattering of aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza, while Israel, Egypt, Hamas and the United States have argued over what, or who, may enter or exit.
The bottleneck has deepened a humanitarian crisis far past the point of desperation, with Gaza suffocating under a blanket Israeli siege and running out of food, water, fuel and medicine, according to humanitarian aid workers.
At about 10:30 a.m. local time, white ambulances belonging to the Palestinian Red Crescent drove through a border gate at the Rafah crossing, parking across from yellow ambulances that would take the injured onward to hospitals in Egypt.
Since a deadly attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas militants inside Israel killed at least 1,400 people, 8,796 Palestinians in Gaza have died, including 3,648 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. More than 22,000 Palestinians have been injured — overwhelming a collapsing health system, with medical workers overworked and critical supplies running out.
By early Wednesday afternoon, only 22 injured Palestinians had crossed into Egypt, of 81 people who were cleared to leave, according to Wael Abu Omar, a media spokesman for the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing. More than a 150 foreign passport holders had also departed for Egypt, he said.
The modest exodus came as Israel is intensifying its military operations in Gaza. A series of strikes Tuesday on the Jabalya refugee camp targeting a senior Hamas commander in northern Gaza killed and injured hundreds of people, destroying around 20 buildings, according to the Health Ministry and Marwan Al-Sultan, the medical director at the Indonesian Hospital. Israel’s military acknowledged it had carried out the strikes.
Late Tuesday, another Israeli strike in a different area of the camp killed more than 20 people from the same family, Sultan said in an interview. The Israeli military said it hit a multistory building during battles with Hamas fighters. The IDF reported 15 soldiers died in Tuesday’s clashes. The Post could not independently verify these accounts.
The latest strike on Wednesday hit Jabalya’s Fallujah neighborhood, where “an entire densely populated square was targeted at a time when people were sitting safely at home,” Sultan said. “We are still receiving more casualties, including amputees and internal bleeding in the brain,” he said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s attack.
Tuesday’s strikes on Jabalya sparked a global wave of condemnation, including from Middle Eastern governments. The United Arab Emirates, which has diplomatic relations with Israel, called for a cease-fire and said the attacks will “result in irreparable ramifications in the region,” according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
“The UAE reiterates that the continued lack of a political horizon risks catastrophic repercussions, and disregarding the potential consequences would lead to devastating outcomes for the prospects of peace and stability in the region,” the statement said.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said Israel’s attack was “inhumane” and violated international law. If the war continues, the fighting will lead to “a humanitarian disaster for which the Israeli occupation and the international community bear responsibility,” the statement said.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Tuesday that as of Sunday, nearly 2,000 people have been reported missing and could be trapped or dead under rubble in Gaza. More than half — 1,050 — are children, the agency said, adding that lack of fuel had hampered rescue efforts with anecdotal evidence suggesting injured people are increasingly relying on donkey carts to evacuate.
As Palestinian rescue workers tried to locate the victims of the latest Israeli strikes Wednesday morning, Gaza experienced another major interruption of internet and communication lines, according to cybersecurity monitoring group Netblocks.
“The incident is consistent with the loss of service on Friday and is likely to be experienced by most residents as a total or near-total loss of communications,” Netblocks’s director of research, Isik Mater, told The Washington Post via email, referring to a previous blackout.
PalTel, the main telecom provider in Gaza, said on social media that communications and internet services have been completely cut off “due to international routes that were previously reconnected being cut off again.” Service was restored after an eight hour break.
Over the weekend, the densely populated enclave of more than 2 million people experienced a near-total communications blackout, hindering rescue efforts and deliveries of aid.
The Israeli military announced Wednesday that its navy missile boats arrived in the Red Sea “as part of defensive efforts in the area.” Their deployment came as Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed they fired a “large salvo of ballistic and winged missiles and a large number of drones” against Israel, which said it had intercepted “an aerial threat” in the Red Sea area — underscoring regional fears of a widening conflict.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Wednesday threatened Israel and the United States if the attack on Gaza did not end immediately. If Israel “continues its attack against the civilians and women, they will pay a huge price, anyone backing those war crimes will pay a huge price,” he said at a news conference with his Turkish counterpart. Both ministers called for the need for a lasting peace in the region.