Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haneya called on Wednesday for an emergency meeting with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Egyptian officials on opening Gaza border crossings.
Haneya, dismissed Palestinian Prime Minister after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip by force from the security forces loyal to Abbas' Fatah movement last June, made the call in a televised address to Gazans.
"We are ready to sit down with our Egyptian brothers and the brothers from Ramallah during an emergency meeting in Cairo to establish arrangements to open the Rafah border crossing, as well as all other border crossings," Haneya said from his Gaza City office live on Hamas TV.
"We don't want to be the only ones in control of these matters, " he added.
Haneya made the speech after militants from Hamas' armed wing blew up fence walls at the borders between the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt on Wednesday morning, which allowed thousands of Gazans to flock into the Egyptian side, witnesses and security sources said.
Local witnesses told Xinhua that they also saw bulldozers starting to remove barbed wires on the borders as well as the rubbles of the cement and blocks fence after more than 15 big holes were opened in the fence wall.
Palestinian security sources said that thousands of Gaza Strip residents crossed into Egypt to buy their needs of basic foods, medicines, clothes and cigarettes.
Source: GNA
