LIFELINE CROSSING
First Brits cross Gaza border but others are TURNED AWAY after Hamas made hostage threat & 15 IDF soldiers killed
Up to 500 foreign passport holders were expected to flee via the crossing
THE first Brits have crossed the border from Gaza to Egypt - while others have been turned away.
The Foreign Office confirmed that British nationals used the Rafah border crossing last night but did not say how many.
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"We will continue working with partners to ensure the crossing is opened again allowing vital aid into Gaza and more British nationals to leave safely," a statement read.
"The crossing will be open for controlled and time-limited periods to allow specific groups of foreign nationals and the seriously wounded to leave".
Hundreds of desperate foreign nationals managed to pour into Egypt across the southern checkpoint, which opened on Thursday for the first time since the deadly October 7 attacks.
Rishi Sunak previously said around 200 British citizens trapped in Gaza had contacted the Foreign Office in an urgent plea for help ahead of Israel's ground invasion.
READ MORE ON ISRAEL HAMAS
Up to 500 foreign passport holders were expected to flee via the crossing, although they may not have all been able to leave.
And 81 injured civilians in Gaza will also be allowed into Egypt to receive medical care, Sky reports.
One family attempting to make the crossing for the third time with a disabled 15-year-old boy his "seizures kept getting worse and worse" as the war progressed.
After the hospital ran out of the medication he needed, the family tried to cross the border to reach safety, but have now been left trapped at the crossing.
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"We are trying to survive. We're not sure we're going to make it, but we're trying to do everything we can to survive because I simply don't want to die at 24," his sister said.
It came as Hamas made a chilling new threat to hostages, saying they will face the same fate as civilians in Gaza.
The terror group's leader Ismail Haniyeh said that Israeli hostages will experience the same "death and destruction" that Palestinians have faced.
In a recorded video message he accused Israel of committing "barbaric massacres against unarmed civilians", saying it was covering its own "defeats."
The Rafah crossing, the only route out of Gaza not controlled by Israel, was opened in a crucial move to allow 500 trapped foreigners to escape the hellish battleground.
At least 320 foreign passport holders used the crossing to evacuate Gaza on Wednesday, three Egyptian security sources and a Palestinian official said.
Schoolteacher Zaynab al Wandawi, from Manchester, who travelled to Gaza with her family days before the October 7 attack told she is now stuck and "running out of supplies."
Speaking on the phone near the border crossing, she said: "We went to the border, they told us that British passport holders and American passport holders will not be let through yet.
"They said to try again tomorrow."
Her distressed mum Lalah Ali Faten, told the her daughter is “distraught” and “feeling abandoned by the British Government.”
Another Brit Mohammed Ghalayini, 44, told the newspaper he went to the border but there was “no hope for me getting through today and I went back”.
UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said earlier there are "no certainties" regarding British nationals escaping from Gaza.
Mr Cleverly said, "everything is difficult and uncertain and we need to be realistic about that".
"We've spoken extensively with Egypt and of course with Israel and through intermediaries [and] we have sent messages to Hamas," he added.
"It's not easy and there are no certainties, but we will not rest until we have done what we can to help the British nationals in Gaza."
It comes as...
- The ground invasion of Gaza continues as IDF troops and tanks storm the enclave, targeting terrorist strongholds
- Israeli military claim to have destroyed 11,000 Hamas targets in the Gaza strip so far
- Over 1,400 Israelis have died since Hamas' deadly attacks on October 7
- Gaza claims almost 9,000 civilians have been killed, as previous death tolls from Hamas have been widely disputed
- A top Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari, was reportedly killed in Israel's airstrike on a Gaza refugee camp
- Hamas claimed 50 civilians died in the blast, as Israel insisted they had eliminated militants in the "terrorist stronghold"
- Israeli PM Netanyahu rejected all calls for a ceasefire saying "this is a time for war"
On Wednesday, the Foreign Secretary had announced Brits would be able to leave through the crossing, which has only briefly been opened for food and aid trucks.
Cleverly said: "UK teams are ready to assist British nationals as soon as they are able to leave.
"It’s vital that life-saving humanitarian aid can enter Gaza as quickly as possible."
Another threat by a Hamas official was made earlier this week, when Ghazi Hamad told Lebanese news outlet LBCI that "Israel is a country that has no place on our land."
"We must remove that country," he said according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
"We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again.
"The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth. Because we have the determination...to fight."
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Israeli forces claim to have destroyed 11,000 Hamas targets in the region since the war began as their ground invasion continues.
Recent days have seen Israel ferociously pound the Gaza Strip as the IDF expands its ground operation inside the enclave, which Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu warned would be "long and difficult".
A total of 15 soldiers have been killed in battle, the IDF has confirmed.
The two latest victims were Staff Sgt. Itay Yehuda, 20, a member of the Givati Brigade and Staff Sgt. Shay Arvas, 20, with the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar unit.
And on Monday the Israeli military claimed to have blitzed 600 terror targets in a 24-hour firestorm as they pushed Hamas back.
Footage shows tanks and troops storming the enclave as Israel also wiped out the head of Hamas' navy in their "second stage" of war.
The IDF, whose tanks have reached Gaza City, said they had destroyed a Hamas "terrorist stronghold" on Tuesday night when they attacked a refugee camp.
Hamas said the Israeli airstrike took the lives of more than 50 people in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
The IDF claimed it was being used as a base for Hamas terrorists to hide, and said they killed 50 militants in the blast.
The commander of Hamas's Central Jabaliya Battalion Ibrahim Biari was killed in the strike, they added.
Israeli forces claimed Biari was one of the Hamas leaders responsible for sending militants to carry out the deadly 7 October attacks in Israel.
Photos of Tuesday's blast showed neighbourhoods reduced to rubble and streets in ruins after the blast.
Onlookers covered in dust from the remains of fallen buildings were pictured digging through bricks and pulling bodies from the rubble.
"More than 50 martyrs and around 150 wounded and dozens under the rubble, in a heinous Israeli massacre that targeted a large area of homes in Jabalia camp in the northern Strip," a Gazan health ministry statement said of the strike.
Hamas yesterday put the death toll in Gaza to date at 8,796.
However, previous Hamas claims of death tolls caused by Israeli strikes have been widely called into question.
Earlier this month, Hamas claimed an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza hospital killed 500 civilians in Gaza.
But Israel hit back with a furious denial of both the death toll and the cause of the blast - insisting the devastation was the result of a rocket misfired by Hamas allies Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Israel then released its evidence after vehemently denying responsibility for the catastrophic explosion at the Al-Ahli Hospital.
Two Hamas operatives were allegedly recorded saying the rocket was fired by another Palestinian terror group, Islamic Jihad.
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Meanwhile, Israeli TV broadcast footage appeared to show a rocket barrage being fired over the hospital from within the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli claims were backed by US President Joe Biden and UK PM Rishi Sunak, and the huge death toll was widely disputed.
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