Israel-Hamas war: Hundreds of foreign nationals cross Gaza-Egypt border – with Britons among them
The first British nationals have left Gaza and crossed the Rafah border into Egypt, the Foreign Office has said.
UK teams are on the ground providing assistance, but the Foreign Office did not specify how many Britons had crossed the border.
A total of 76 wounded people and their companions left Gaza in ambulances today, according to a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority.
Around six buses carrying 335 foreign nationals also departed into Egypt, the spokesman added.
The Rafah border will be open again on Thursday to allow foreign passport holders out of Gaza, the authority confirmed.
Follow live: Israel-Gaza latest updates
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the crossings of the first British nationals was a “hugely important first step”.
He said the UK is working with Egyptian and Israeli authorities to ensure the crossing stays open, so all Britons can get out to safety in the coming days.
Pic: AP
But there are still foreign nationals struggling to leave.
A UK-based academic and her five children were unable to leave Gaza for Egypt as the first group of injured evacuees moved over the Rafah border.
Dr Emilee Rauschenberger, 42, told Sky News that her family came to the border as they got notice from the UK’s Foreign Office that the crossing might be opening.
She said the family wanted to travel back to Manchester, having travelled to Gaza to visit her husband’s family three weeks ago.
“We want to leave Gaza and go back to Britain,” she said. “A few days after the war started we had to leave our homes and move to Khan Younis. We have been displaced the whole time.”
In other developments:
• The UK’s foreign secretary says teams are ready to assist British nationals in Gaza as soon as they are able to leave;
• The Israel Defence Forces says 16 of its troops have been killed in Gaza since Tuesday;
• Hamas claims seven hostages have been killed during a strike on a refugee camp in Gaza;
• Around 51 trucks carrying aid have arrived in Gaza.
‘Lots of bombing’ and daily struggles for food
Dr Rauschenberger has worked for the education organisation, the Queen Rania Foundation, in Jordan for two years.
She said her family, including her five children – aged 14, 12, 10-year-old twins and a four-year-old – have had no electricity and no sanitary drinking water while in Gaza.
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Dr Emilee Rauschenberger on trying to leave Gaza
No humanitarian aid was delivered to the area they were in, and they had to go out daily to find food, she said.
“At night there is lots of bombing, especially in the last week. It’s very difficult. I am just waiting with my five kids and my husband to go,” she said.
Jabalia in Gaza before damage from airstrikes. Pic: Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies
After damage. Pic: Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies
Earlier on Wednesday, the Foreign Office said in a text to Britons in Gaza: “Once we receive confirmation that you are permitted to cross the Rafah border, we will send a message to ask you to travel to the crossing.
“Crossings are expected to take place across a number of days.”
It said it has given a full list of names of British nationals and dependants in Gaza to Israeli and Egyptian authorities.
‘I just want to come home’
Another who didn’t cross the border today was 29-year-old Briton Zaynab Wandawi, who is in Gaza with 10 members of her family.
Speaking to Sky News, Ms Wandawi’s mother, Lalah Ali Faten, said the family travelled in hope to the border today but didn’t find their names on the list of those permitted to cross into Egypt.
Zaynab Wandawi (right) and her mother Lalah Ali Faten
“They are working on a list of names, and we are very hopeful that their names will be on tomorrow’s list,” Ms Faten said.
Giving an update on her daughter’s condition from Manchester, Ms Faten said the family ran out of drinking water yesterday and have been bathing in seawater.
“The last message I got from her was her saying ‘Mum, I just want to come home’,” Ms Faten said.
‘Be ready to go’
Meanwhile, Dr Abdel Hammad, a surgeon at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, said he was told “be ready to go” by the Foreign Office as he waited to cross the border into Egypt.
He arrived in Gaza on 6 October, a day before the attack on Israel by Hamas.
Dr Hammad told Sky News that he was about 5km from the Rafah crossing, and was waiting to be allowed through.
Dr Abdel Hammad
President Joe Biden said American citizens were expected to be among the first group of foreigners able to leave Gaza for Egypt via the Rafah crossing today.
“We expect American citizens to exit today, and we expect to see more depart over the coming days,” he wrote on social media platform, X.
A deal, mediated by Qatar, was struck between Egypt, Israel, and Hamas, to open the crossing to foreign and dual nationals currently trapped in Gaza.
Read more:
What is the Rafah border crossing and who controls it?
How far has Israel got into Gaza?
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Crowds enter Rafah crossing from Gaza
Palestinians cross to the Egyptian side of the border. Pic: AP
Footage broadcast on Egyptian state TV – and seen by Sky News – showed injured people being transported in ambulances across the border from the Gaza Strip.
Egypt’s health ministry said a field hospital has been set up in an Egyptian town near the crossing.
Earlier, a convoy of Egyptian ambulances were seen waiting to go through the Rafah crossing from the Egyptian side
The Italian foreign minister also confirmed four Italian citizens, one of whom was accompanied by his Palestinian wife, were also among those who have already left Gaza.
Rafah is Gaza’s only gateway to the rest of the world not directly controlled by Israel.
It is under the control of Egypt as part of an agreement with Israel and the European Union.
However, it has never been a normal, fully open border crossing and is tightly controlled by authorities in Cairo.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
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Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
Read more:
Who is in Trump’s top team?
Trump’s cabinet signals tough stance on China
Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
Read more from Sky News:
Mass displacement in Gaza – people unsure where to go
Donald Trump picks vaccine sceptic as health secretary
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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