The group entered with ten trucks of humanitarian aid, but without fuel.
Local sources said the first team of ten foreign doctors from the Red Cross, with ten trucks carrying humanitarian aid but no fuel, entered the Gaza Strip this Friday through the Egyptian Rafah crossing.
A spokesman for the Palestinian side of the Palestinian Authority, Wael Abu Omar, said in a statement that a “medical team of ten foreign doctors” had entered the Gaza Strip and trucks were carrying water, food and medicine.
With this new humanitarian aid, 84 trucks, in six different batches, have entered the Palestinian territory through Egypt since Israel authorized the operations on Saturday.
Sources on Rafah’s Egyptian side told Spanish agency EFE that the doctors were members of the Red Cross, the organization that managed the entry of aid through the crossing, but did not specify their nationalities.
They also confirmed that the new shipment of humanitarian aid does not include fuel needed for hospitals, desalination plants and other essential services.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings, said today in Jerusalem that emergency generators that run essential services are “turning off one by one due to fuel shortages”.
Hastings noted that a small amount of fuel entered Gaza through a pumping station “paid for by Qatar” and was transported “to Rafah with the knowledge of Israel”.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees in the Middle East was able to access 200,000 liters of fuel on Thursday, he added, adding that it needs about 130,000 liters per day.
Known by its English acronym UNRWA, the UN agency is one of the main humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza.
The war between Israel and Hamas was fueled by unprecedented attacks, of violence and scale, that the Palestinian Islamist group carried out on Israeli soil on October 7.
Hamas has killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped more than two hundred Israelis and foreigners, which it is holding hostage in the Gaza Strip.
Following the attack, Israel cut off energy, water and fuel supplies to more than two million residents of the Gaza Strip, which has been under Hamas control since 2007.
According to Hamas, the Israeli army has been bombarding a small area of 365 square kilometers with more than seven thousand deaths.
Israel, the United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization.