By DPA
Gaza City : Thousands of Palestinians stormed out of the Gaza Strip into Egypt early Wednesday, crossing the border through dozens of holes blown into a boundary wall or through cut barbed wire fencing, witnesses said.
A day after severe clashes at the Rafah border crossing, Egyptian border guards did not intervene and allowed the Palestinians to move on to al-Arish, on the coast some 50 km south of Gaza, to buy food, fuel and other scarce supplies.
Some of them could be seen crossing back into Gaza carrying baskets and goods like mattresses on their backs.
The gunmen of the Al-Qassam Brigades – the armed wing of the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza – and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) also brought in bulldozers to remove sections of the concrete wall on the Gaza-Egypt border, footage on Palestinian television showed.
The thousands of Gazans were escaping an Israeli economic blockade, tightened further after a surge in rocket attacks from the coastal salient at southern Israel last week.
On Tuesday morning, Israel reopened two of its border crossings with the Gaza Strip to humanitarian aid and diesel fuel after nearly four days of a total lock-down.
The diesel was enough to keep Gaza’s only local power plant running for one week, as well as generators used in hospitals.
But Israel has said it will keep a tight grip on the Gaza Strip until the rocket attacks end.
At least 60 people were injured in the clashes Tuesday between Egyptian security forces and thousands of Hamas supporters, many of them women, protesting on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing.
During the clashes Tuesday, the Egyptian security forces first used water cannons and clubs to beat back the crowd trying to break through the border.
But dramatic television footage showed the Egyptians firing a volley of live ammunition and the crowds suddenly fleeing in the opposite direction, after a Palestinian gunmen climbed on the iron gate and shot in the direction of the guards. Another Palestinian militant was also seen firing his Kalashnikov over the heads of the civilian protesters at the Egyptian security forces.
Five people including a Palestinian woman were injured in the firing.
The Hamas-organized demonstrations began at the Rafah crossing point Monday, with protesters calling for the border to be opened to allow Palestinian patients into Egypt for medical treatment.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Hamas militant and injured four others in an exchange of fire near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, hospital officials said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Palestinian militants fired two more mortar shells from Gaza by mid-Wednesday morning, after some 22 Gaza-made al-Quds and Nasser rockets were launched at southern Israel Tuesday.