الجمعة، نوفمبر 17 نوفمبر 2023
Another Swiss dual national was able to leave the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning. This means that all Swiss dual nationals who so wished have now left Gaza. Seven people with Swiss citizenship had already left the Gaza Strip on November 2.
The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) is aware of four more people who wish to remain in the Gaza Strip voluntarily, as it announced on Thursday.
The man, who left the Gaza Strip for Egypt via the Rafah border crossing on Thursday morning, was received and looked after by staff from the Swiss embassy in Cairo. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis expressed his “relief” on the short message portal X (formerly Twitter).
Many more people with foreign passports left the Gaza Strip on Thursday. More than 200 had arrived on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, the Egyptian Red Crescent reported according to the dpa news agency.
During the course of the day, around 800 foreigners and Palestinians with second passports were scheduled to leave the country. According to a list compiled by the border authorities on the Palestinian side, in addition to Swiss passports, these departing nationals also hold passports from Russia, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Norway and the USA.
On October 7, Palestinian Hamas fighters attacked Israeli border villages from the Gaza Strip, causing a massacre of civilians and over a thousand deaths. Since then, the Israeli army has been attacking the Gaza Strip, which is populated by around 2.2 million Palestinians, from the air and on the ground. Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, puts the number of Palestinian casualties at over 10,000.
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