Aid convoy arrives, via Egypt, to blockaded Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - The “Miles of Smiles 34” aid convoy arrived in the blockaded Gaza Strip on Tuesday via Egypt’s Rafah border crossing.

Teeming with medical and humanitarian aid, the convoy traversed the Rafah crossing accompanied by a delegation of high-profile Arab and foreign personalities.

“The ‘Miles of Smiles’ convoy has arrived in Gaza,” Aladdin al-Battah, head of Gaza’s committee to break the siege, said in a Tuesday statement.

According to al-Battah, a second stage of the aid convoy -- which is the first of its kind to reach Gaza since Israel’s 2014 onslaught -- will enter the strip from Egypt on Wednesday.

Members of the delegation plan to visit Gaza’s refugee camps, along with Palestinians injured by Israeli army gunfire during recent violence near the Gaza-Israel security fence.

According to Palestine’s official statistics agency, more than half of the Gaza Strip’s roughly two million inhabitants were under the poverty line in 2017.

Last year, the UN said that some 80 percent of Gaza’s inhabitants were in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

The Gaza Strip continues to groan under a decade-long Israeli/Egyptian blockade that has effectively destroyed the territory's economy and deprived its inhabitants of many basic commodities.