Egyptian Foreign Minister and Palestinian Prime Minister at the Rafah Crossing in Gaza

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa called on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, speaking to reporters outside Egypt's Rafah border crossing.

Abdelatty said that between July 27 and August 17, 1,288 trucks of aid entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

He added that Egypt has contributed about 70 percent of the humanitarian aid that has entered Gaza since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023.

Egypt has also received more than 18,000 wounded Palestinians and their families for medical treatment, he added.

The two officials also visited Egyptian Red Crescent facilities, where aid is sorted and hot meals destined for Gaza are cooked and packaged. They then met with Palestinians evacuated for medical reasons who are receiving treatment at Arish Hospital. Responding to international outrage over images of starving Gazans, on July 27, Israel announced measures to allow more aid into Gaza. But aid agencies say only a fraction of what they send reaches its destination. Israel vehemently denies restricting humanitarian aid.

Five more Palestinians have died of malnutrition and starvation in the past 24 hours, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Monday, bringing the number of people who have died from these causes since the war began to 263, including 112 children.

At the press conference, Abdelatty said: “Sadly, we have all witnessed the systematic attack by the Israeli war machine against civilians and infrastructure, including the attack on those awaiting aid, in addition to the use of starvation, even against innocent children, which has led to their deaths from malnutrition, lack of medicines and the spread of epidemics and diseases in shameful scenes.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa also declared before the cameras: "We continue to work with our brothers in Egypt to prepare as soon as possible a reconstruction conference in Cairo, in order to rebuild Gaza in cooperation with our brothers and friends on the basis of the Arab plan for the recovery and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip."