At least 74 American citizens crossed into Egypt from Gaza on Thursday as part of a deal brokered by the US, Israel, Egypt and Qatar, which acted as a mediator with Hamas.
“Good news – we got out today 74 American folks, dual citizens,” US president Joe Biden told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. It comes one day after Mr Biden declared that he had “secured safe passage” for wounded Palestinians and foreign nationals to exit the territory.
More than 400 US citizens have been cleared to leave under the deal, according to a list of names seen by The Independent. But precisely how many will be able to make it to the Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt, is unclear, due to the intensity of Israeli bombing across the Gaza strip.
British Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta said that the Israeli army had opened fire on ambulances carrying wounded people along a coastal road that was declared safe by the Israeli army on Thursday. Video footage released a few days ago an Israeli tank firing on a car on Salalhuddin road: the main artery from the north to the south in Gaza.
The Independent requested comment from the Israeli army about the alleged attack on the coastal road but did not receive a response.
Still, some are making it through. Wael Abo Mohsin, a Palestinian official in Gaza, said that 384 foreign nationals had left via the Rafah crossing on Thursday, along with 21 wounded.
But there were chaotic scenes at the border for the last two days as hundreds of desperate civilians waited to find out if their names were on the list of evacuated. Mr Abo Mohsin said many different nationalities arrived only to find no one from their country was on the list. The process is being controlled by Egypt, and officials on the Palestinian side say have little information.
On Wednesday, the Israeli government said that all foreign nationals and injured residents of Gaza are free to evacuate.
“We opened Rafah […] and allowed the foreigners to evacuate. This, we hope, will continue the next few days,” said Colonel Elad Goren, a spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli defence agency that usually liaises with Palestinians, said in a briefing with reporters on Wednesday evening.
Authorities on the Egyptian side of the crossing from southern Gaza have a list of hundreds of names of foreign nationals that have been cleared by all sides.
“The countries gave us the names of their residents that they want to evacuate from [Gaza]. We checked each and every name,” he said, adding that injured Palestinians “who are not part of terror” are also allowed to cross into Egypt for medical treatment.
The US previously estimated that 500-600 Americans have been trapped in Gaza since Israel declared a “total siege” of the territory and launched an offensive in response to a massacre by Hamas of more than 1,400 people. More than 8,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombing in the time since, including more than 3,700 children.
A US State Department spokesperson said on Wednesday that some American citizens had already left Gaza, but he did not provide a number.
Speaking aboard Air Force One on Wednesday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called the opening of the Rafah crossing “an important first step in a process that we expect to see continue over the coming days” and a “a significant breakthrough” that was a “direct result of weeks of effort and personal diplomacy” on the part of Mr Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Special Envoy David Satterfield.
“It was certainly a focus of the President’s calls with [Egyptian] President Sisi and [Israeli] Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday, where this arrangement was discussed in detail,” he added.
