Egypt orders reopening of Gaza border

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday ordered the opening of the Rafah border crossing to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, the official Mena agency reported.

The order came a day after a deadly raid by Israeli commandos on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007.

"Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has given orders to open the Rafah border crossing to allow humanitarian and medical aid into the Gaza Strip, as well as to receive medical cases which require access to Egyptian territory," Mena said.

"This comes as part of Egypt's moves to ease the suffering of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip."

According to Egyptian security sources in Rafah, the border opened yesterday at 1.30 pm (1030 GMT). No date has been set for it to close again.

The Rafah border is Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel. Egypt has kept it largely closed, opening it for humanitarian cases on two days a week.

A 2005 agreement brokered by the United States, put the Palestinian Authority and Israel in charge of the border, with observation from the European Union.

Five Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza yesterday as militants launched rockets and a rare cross-border raid after a deadly Israeli assault on an aid convoy.

Three of the five were killed by an Israeli strike in the north of the Hamas-run territory, according to Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.

The military said it had launched an air strike against a "terrorist squad preparing to fire rockets into Israel" and that there had been secondary blasts indicating the presence of explosives.

The military said that, in an unrelated incident, two rockets launched from the territory landed in Israel. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

Israeli troops had earlier shot dead two Palestinian gunmen who had snuck across the border in the southern part of Gaza, according to a military spokeswoman.

"There was an exchange of fire in which they were killed," she said, adding that no Israelis were wounded.

Witnesses on the Gaza side of the border said the exchange of fire was followed by Israeli shelling, and an AFP photographer saw an Israeli helicopter firing missiles.

There was no immediate report of casualties from the Palestinian side as ambulances were not able to enter the area.

The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, which came after a similar raid less than two weeks ago in which two teenagers were shot dead after breaching the border fence in the same area.

Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers have tried to preserve calm since the end of Israel's devastating assault on the strip in January 2009, but smaller militant groups still occasionally fire rockets and trade fire with Israeli troops.

It was unclear if the latest attacks were linked to Monday's Israeli maritime raid on an international aid convoy bound for Gaza in which nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed.

A Hamas official told AFP the Islamist movement "reiterates its demand that the Arab League work for an immediate and complete end to the siege on Gaza".

Arab foreign ministers are to hold crisis talks in Cairo today to come up with a unified response to the Israeli raid.