US and Egypt have announced a deal to allow humanitarian aid to enter war-torn Gaza, where one million people have fled their homes amid withering Israeli air strikes.
After intense telephone diplomacy with Egypt, US President Joe Biden said a limited number of trucks would be allowed to cross the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza from Friday.
Egypt said the humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip will pass through the Rafah crossing as hundreds of aid trucks wait at the gates of the enclave being bombarded by Israel.
"Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and American President Joe Biden have agreed on the sustainable delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip via the Rafah terminal," said presidential spokesperson Ahmed Fahmy in a statement, without specifying a date.
Israel's conditions
Israeli officials said the deliveries would be limited to "food, water and medicine", and that the effort was conditional on aid not being used by Hamas.
It would be the first international relief to enter Gaza since October 7, when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched raids into Israel.
Since then, Israel has besieged the Palestinian enclave, launching wave after wave of air strikes, enforcing a blockade and deploying tens of thousands of troops to the border in preparation for an expected ground assault.
Top UN humanitarian official Martin Griffiths on Wednesday said the situation in Gaza was dire, with hospitals overwhelmed, more than 3,00 0 Gazans killed and 12,500 injured.
"The pace of death, of suffering, of destruction" he said "cannot be exaggerated."
Trucks queued
Despite the devastation, more than 100 trucks have been queued for days on the Egyptian side of the border waiting to enter Gaza.
Israel fears that aid deliveries could be used as cover to bring in weapons, or could be diverted into the hands of Hamas - which governs the enclave.
Israel has already hit the border crossing with multiple air strikes since this phase of the decades-old conflict began.
Egypt controls the border and fears throwin g open the gates would bring tens of thousands of refugees to its territory.
