Hamas policemen seized a convoy of humanitarian aid bound for the Palestinian Red Crescent on Thursday evening, the second convoy it has taken from the aid agency, aid employees said.

Policemen from Hamas halted 14 trucks filled with food and medicine at a checkpoint after it crossed an Israeli checkpoint into Gaza on Thursday, said employees of the Palestinian Red Crescent, who declined to be named, fearing reprisals from ruling group Hamas.
A Hamas official said the aid was seized because the organization was distributing aid to former Fatah fighters and not to impoverished Palestinians...

...Employees from the Red Crescent said they were meant to distribute the aid to some 8,000 needy Gaza residents from lists of people the organization keeps. The aid came from the organization's regional headquarters in Jordan, an employee said.

An employee said policemen halted the aid convoy and checked the trucks' contents. "They then insisted to drive one car in front us and another behind us, and led us to police compound in Gaza City," he said by telephone from the police station where he was held.

Later, the food aid was unloaded in the warehouses of the Hamas Ministry of Social Affairs, and two trucks of medicine were taken to a nearby Hamas-run hospital, he said.

The employee said that it was the second time Hamas policemen seized aid meant for the Red Crescent. Last month the organization received a shipment for different Gaza governates, which Hamas does not recognize. The militant group seized the aid from warehouses...

Egypt said on Thursday it would no longer tolerate Palestinians infiltrating the country from the Gaza Strip, and threatened to break the legs of anyone crossing the Rafah border illegally.

"Anyone who breaches the border will have their legs broken," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency on public television overnight...

Israel began to cut a small amount of the electricity it supplies to the Gaza Strip Thursday night as part of a planned move.

'About half a megawatt of electricity from Israel was cut to Gaza,' a ministry of defense spokesman said, noting this was less than 1 per cent of the total electricity supplied by Israel to the salient, which stands at about 120mw.

According to a plan approved by Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, Israel will continue to reduce supplies by up to 5 percent each week for the next few weeks.

'This is part of the continued disengagement from the Gaza Strip,' the ministry official said, referring to the 2005 'disengagement' plan in which Israel pulled its permanent military presence and settlements out of the Strip...