Thousands of Palestinians jam Gaza border, temporarily opened by Egypt
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GAZA - Thousands of Palestinian travellers gathered at Gaza's border crossing with Egypt on Thursday hoping for a brief chance to leave after Cairo temporarily opened a frontier it largely keeps closed as it battles an Islamist insurgency on the other side.
Israel also maintains tight restrictions on its border with the Gaza Strip, meaning the 2 million Palestinians who live there are rarely able to leave the densely-populated enclave in which the Hamas Islamist movement is the dominant armed force.
The Palestinian embassy in Cairo "extended gratitude to President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi for his care to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people," it said in a statement.
It was only the second time in more than a decade that the border was opened while unarmed security officers of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), rather than Hamas, guarded the Palestinian side.
