Egypt has bolstered its security on the borders of the Gaza Strip over the past two weeks,
madamasr.com reports.
Around 40 tanks and armored personnel carriers have been deployed to Egyptian Rafah, according to Egyptian security sources cited anonymously by Reuters.
Around a week ago, Egypt also began to fortify the area, according to displaced people taking shelter in Palestinian Rafah and an administrative source on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.
They described concrete walls topped with barbed wire between the Rafah border crossing, which separates Egyptian from Palestinian Rafah, and the Karam Abu Salem crossing further south on the border. Brick walls are also being erected at intervals behind the steel barrier which runs north from the Rafah crossing along the border with Palestine and up to the Mediterranean coast, they said.
The new measures heighten Egypt’s existing provisions for security on its northeastern border with the Gaza Strip, and come as Israel considers a ground invasion of Palestinian Rafah, where approximately 1.4 million people — most of them displaced since October 7 — have taken shelter according to UNRWA. Thousands are residing in tents along the border fence — their final refuge from Israel’s invasion of the strip.
Airstrikes targeting Rafah over the weekend killed 58 Palestinians. 25 of those — mostly women and children — were killed in airstrikes on homes in central and northern Rafah on Saturday, according to the Palestinian News and Information Agency, WAFA.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday that “it is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” adding that the PM had directed the military and security establishments to submit a combined plan for eliminating Hamas’ battalions and the evacuation of Palestinians from Rafah.
