GAZA: The health ministry in Gaza says 20 patients will be allowed to travel outside the besieged enclave for emergency treatment in Egypt, Al Jazeera reports.

The announcement, posted on Telegram, said the patients will be allowed to travel through the Rafah Crossing today.

According to Al Jazeera, among the 20 patients listed is a one-month infant girl who is suffering from a head injury.

Medical officials from Gaza, including the medical director of Abu Youssef Al Najjar Hospital, Dr Marwan al-Hams, have made repeated pleas that patients with serious medical conditions be allowed to leave Gaza for life-saving treatment outside the besieged territory.

A Hamas delegation is due in Cairo today to give its “observations” about an Egyptian plan for a ceasefire recently put forward.

Sources close to Hamas say Cairo’s three-stage plan provides for renewable ceasefires, a staggered release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and ultimately a ceasefire to end the conflict.

It also provides for a Palestinian government of technocrats after talks involving “all Palestinian factions”, which would be responsible for governing and rebuilding post-crisis Gaza.

A Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said yesterday that the delegation would “give the response of the Palestinian factions, including several observations” regarding details of the exchanges and “guarantees for a complete Israeli military withdrawal”.

Diaa Rashwan, who heads Egypt’s State Information Services, said the plan was “intended to bring together the views of all parties concerned, with the aim of ending the shedding of Palestinian blood”.

Israeli shelling near a southern Gaza hospital has killed 41 people over the past two days, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, after Israel stepped up its attacks in the centre and south of the besieged territory.

The PRCS condemned what it said was Israeli shelling near the Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis that “led to the martyrdom of ten people and the injury of at least 21 others”, adding the attack followed one in front of the hospital the day before that killed 31.

Later in the day, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said Israeli shelling had killed 20 people, most of them women and children, at the Shaboura camp in Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt.

AFP footage from the city showed bloodied people being rushed through the streets to the nearby Kuwaiti hospital, where medical staff raced to treat a flood of wounded patients, including children. AFP could not immediately confirm whether they were victims of the same strike.