MANILA – The Philippine government is still waiting for a humanitarian corridor to open via Israel or Egypt to be able to extract Filipinos in the Gaza Strip who are caught in the crossfires between Israel forces and the Hamas.
This is after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. instructed the Department of Foreign Affairs to coordinate with foreign governments to provide critical assistance in looking for Filipinos who are still reported missing or unaccounted for and to help them get out of Gaza if they were taken there.
In a Palace briefing on Friday, DFA Undersecretary Eduardo Jose de Vega said that the Philippines is working hard to repatriate Filipinos in the Gaza Strip and is ready once an opening of a humanitarian corridor will be declared.
“Once it is declared, once the opening is declared, we must be ready and in fact, we are getting ready,” de Vega said.
“Our Embassy in Cairo is sending a team to the border. And we are providing them funding to be able to rent transportation to bring (these 92) from the border to Cairo and to fly them to the Philippines,” he added.
De Vega also said that the Philippines is expecting that the United Nations Security Council will also call for the opening of a safe corridor, where there are two possible exit points, the border with Israel or the Rafah border with Egypt.
According to the DFA, there are now 131 Filipinos in Gaza from the previous 139, after De Vega confirms that some of the Filipinos already left the area before the conflict erupted.
Of the 131, three Filipinos are tourists while the rest are spouses of Palestinian nationals with their children.
