Russia says sending 27 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza

"A special plane has taken off from the airport at Ramenskoye near Moscow for El-Arish in Egypt. The Russian humanitarian aid will be handed over to the Egyptian Red Crescent to be sent to the Gaza Strip," Deputy Minister Ilya Denisov said in a statement, The Moscow Times reports.

Denisov said the aid comprised "wheat, sugar, rice [and] pasta."

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled a deal to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, where 1 million people have fled their homes amid withering Israeli air strikes.

The US president’s trip to the occupied territories was overshadowed by a horrifying Israeli airstrike on a hospital in central Gaza that left at least 500 Palestinians dead, mostly women and children.

After face-to-face talks in Occupied Lands and intense telephone diplomacy with Egypt, Biden said a limited number of trucks would be allowed to cross the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza from Friday.

RHM/PR