Egyptian Red Crescent delivering Indonesian aid to Gaza
Jakarta, The Gulf Observer: The first batch of Indonesia’s humanitarian aid for Palestine would be received by the Egyptian Red Crescent before being distributed to those in need in the besieged Gaza Strip, a police officer stated.
“After arriving in Egypt, the Egyptian Red Crescent will receive our humanitarian aid,” Head of the National Police’s International Relations Division Insp. Gen. Krishna Murti remarked here on Sunday evening.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the delivery of Indonesia’s humanitarian aid at the Soekarno Hatta International Airport, Murti said the total weight of the aid was recorded at 26.5 tons.
The aid packages comprise 100 tents that could accommodate five thousand people, one thousand winter blankets, food, medicines, sanitation kits, water distillers, and minor surgery sets, he stated.
This humanitarian aid from the Indonesian Government was available owning to the National Police’s sound coordination with the Health Ministry, he added.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry revealed that medical supplies, delivered to the Palestinians in Gaza through Egypt’s El Arish International Airport, weighed seven tons.
They included minor surgery sets and food supplements for pregnant women and toddlers, according to Sumarjaya, the head of the ministry’s crisis center.
The aid packages, weighing 26.5 tons, were transported to Egypt aboard a chartered Airbus A330 that took off from the Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten Province, on early Monday.
The commercial aircraft would arrive in Egypt about 1.5 hours earlier than two units of the Indonesian Air Force’s C-130 Hercules that departed from the Halim Perdana Kusuma Air Force Base in East Jakarta on Saturday.
On Saturday morning, President Joko Widodo had sent off humanitarian assistance, weighing 51.5 tons, from the Indonesian government and people for Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
New armed conflict between Palestine and Israel erupted again following a surprise attack by Hamas on Israel early in the morning of October 7.
Prior to the assaults by Palestinian liberation fighters, Israel had continued its closure of Gaza crossings.
Palestine’s news agency WAFA reported on September 25 that the Israeli closure of Gaza crossings had worsened the living conditions of Palestinians in Gaza.
According to WAFA, the Palestinians had already suffered from the severe impacts of “more than 17 years of tight Israeli land, sea, and air blockades.”
Al Jazeera quoted Hamas, which governs Gaza, as stating that its assault on Israel was “a response to the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased settler violence.”
In response to the unprecedented surprise attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas and, according to Al Jazeera, pledged that the Israeli forces would “turn all Hamas hideouts into rubble.”
The ongoing Israeli genocidal campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip, which is home to more than two million people, has resulted in the deaths of several thousand Palestinian civilians and led to a humanitarian crisis.
