Egypt Allows In Travelers From Gaza For First Time Since October

(Reuters) -- Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing Sunday for incoming travelers from the Gaza Strip for the first time in almost two months, Palestinian and Egyptian officials said. Rafah is the only major crossing between impoverished Gaza, home to 1.8 million Palestinians, and the outside world that does not border Israel, which blockades the strip and allows passage mainly on humanitarian grounds.

Egypt shut the crossing Oct. 25 after Islamist militants in Egypt's adjacent Sinai region killed 33 members of its security forces in some of the worst anti-state violence since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was toppled in July 2013.

Since then, Cairo has opened the crossing only twice to allow thousands of Palestinians stranded in Egypt and beyond to return to Gaza, which is dominated by the Islamist Hamas faction.

Hamas has long had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was ousted from power in Egypt when Morsi was overthrown, but its relations with the current Egyptian government are tense.

Maher Abu Sabha, the Hamas-appointed director of crossings, said Rafah would open for two days to allow Gazans with serious illnesses to travel to Egypt and beyond for treatment and to allow foreign nationals and students to travel.

An Egyptian official, citing "security reasons," said there was no decision yet to allow the permanent and full opening of the crossing as was the case before Oct. 25.

Hamas' leaders have distanced themselves from violence in Egypt and in Sinai and say they have no armed presence in areas outside Palestinian boundaries. Some children stood by the fence, while others sat or slept over luggage that piled up outside the gate as their families awaited to pass.

"I have been waiting for three months to leave, this is very bad," said Mnwar Shaath, 58, a Palestinian woman clad in a long black robe who lives in Saudi Arabia and came to visit family in Gaza. "I am sick, and I was afraid I may die here, away from my children, I want to go back and die among them," she said.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Additional reporting by Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia; Writing by Nidal Almughrabi; Editing by Ori Lewis and Tom Heneghan)