Tuesday 12 August 2014

Iran aid for Gaza awaiting Egypt permission

Iran has criticized Egypt for dragging its feet in granting permission for the dispatch of the Islamic Republic’s medical and humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the Islamic Republic is still awaiting Egypt’s permission to send relief aid into Gaza and transfer those wounded in Israeli attacks to Iran for treatment.
It has been more than two weeks that Egyptian officials are refusing to respond positively to a request by the Iranian airlines to send a plane carrying humanitarian aid to the airports in Cairo or Ismailia, he said.
On August 5, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he had held two phone conversations with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry on Israel’s brutal military aggression against Gaza and the necessity to send relief aid to people in the impoverished strip.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry also said on July 25 that shipment of the Iranian Red Crescent’s aid to the blockaded Palestinian territory has been delayed due to bureaucratic obstacles, adding that the delivery of the aid supplies requires Egypt’s cooperation.
In a meeting with Amir-Abdollahian in Tehran earlier this month, Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohamed Badr el-Din Zayed had promised his country would work to make necessary arrangements for the dispatch of Iran’s humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Over 1,940 Palestinians, including 470 children, have lost their lives and nearly 10,000 have been wounded since the Israeli military unleashed fatal assaults on the densely-inhabited strip on July 8. Children also make up one-third of the injured.
The Israeli military has not even spared hospitals in its massive aerial and ground raids on Gaza.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
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