Gaza's Rafah border with Egypt. (Photo: Reuters)
Gaza has called on Egypt to open the Rafah Crossing that has been closed for four weeks, AFP reported Thursday.
Interior ministry spokesman in Gaza Eyad Al-Bozom said in a press conference that there are 30,000 "humanitarian cases" that need to travel urgently, while 6,000 Palestinians are stranded on the Egyptian side.
"The ongoing closure of the Gaza border is a violation of the rights of two million human beings, and makes their life a big prison," Al-Bozom said, adding he does not see a "justification" for closing the border.
Earlier in November, dozens of Palestinian doctors and patients staged a sit-in at the crossing in southern Gaza, calling on Egypt's government to open the frontier to allow people to cross for medical treatment.
Egypt closed the Rafah border, Gaza's only gateway to the world that is not controlled by Israel, on 25 October following a major deadly attack on security forces in North Sinai that prompted the Egyptian government to declare a three-month state of emergency in North Sinai.
Meanwhile, Cairo suspects Palestinian militants of aiding jihadist attacks in Sinai. The government has also started creating a buffer zone expanding to one kilometre along Sinai's border with Gaza.
The Egyptian army has been facing a decade-long jihadist militant insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, with militant attacks increasing over the past year and expanding into Cairo and the Nile Delta, killing hundreds of army and police personnel. Civilians too have been caught up in the violence.
Several attacks have been claimed by the jihadist group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis that has recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, which has taken control of large areas in Syria and Iraq.
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