Gaza, 2 Feb 

Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt reopened for limited traffic on Monday, a key step in the second phase of the US-brokered ceasefire that took effect on 10 October.

The crossing is operating six hours a day, allowing only 150 people at a time to exit for urgent medical care.

Thousands of sick and wounded Palestinians left Gaza through Rafah as health authorities warned that 1,268 people have already died while waiting for transfer in recent months, and the number could rise unless more patients are allowed out immediately. Since October 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza has claimed at least 71,769 lives and left 171,483 injured.

On the Egyptian side, hundreds of ambulances queued to receive evacuees. Egypt’s Health Ministry has prepared 150 hospitals and 300 ambulances, deploying 12,000 doctors and 30 rapid response teams to assist the sick and wounded. Rafah, Gaza’s main crossing before the war, had been seized by Israeli forces in May 2024 to prevent Hamas arms smuggling. Israel had resisted reopening it, but the recovery of the last hostages’ remains last week cleared the path.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it killed Hezbollah operative Ali Dawood Amich in a southern Lebanon airstrike on Sunday. Amich, a senior figure in Hezbollah’s engineering unit, was reportedly attempting to rebuild the group’s military infrastructure and plan attacks on Israeli forces. The IDF described his actions as a breach of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.