GAZA, June 4, (Agencies): Egypt shut its border crossing with Gaza on Saturday for the first time since opening it on a routine basis last month, and angry Palestinians stormed the gates in protest, Hamas officials and witnesses said.
Palestinian border officials said three buses filled with 180 passengers had waited several hours to cross the border at Rafah, the Hamas Islamist-ruled territory’s gateway to Egypt, and some of those waiting responded by forcing the gate open.
“We have not been notified of any reason for the closure, passengers are angry,” one of the officials told Reuters.
Hamas police escorted the protesters back across the border a short time later, after Egyptian soldiers ordered them to leave. There were no reports of any violence or arrests.
The incident came as Palestinians were said to be planning marches to the Israeli borders from neighbouring Arab countries to mark a June 5 anniversary of Israel’s capture of the West Bank and Gaza in a 1967 war.
An Egyptian security source said the terminal at Rafah, Gaza’s only gateway not controlled by Israel, had been shut for maintenance and may reopen by Sunday. Officials in Gaza said they had not been notified beforehand.
Egypt had reopened the crossing on a routine basis on May 28, a step that eased conditions for the coastal territory blockaded on its other borders by Israel, which says it needs to ensure Hamas doesn’t smuggle in weapons.
But tensions over conditions at the Rafah terminal have been building since Hamas accused Egypt this week of placing limits on the number of people allowed through.
Border officials of Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Egypt had set a maximum of 350 Gaza residents to be granted entry each day, though a senior Egyptian security official denied any quota had been imposed.
Egypt, whose interim military rulers had seemed keen to improve ties with the Palestinians, was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel, in a treaty signed in 1979.
Israel has tightened a blockade of Gaza since Hamas, a group that refuses to recognise the Jewish state, seized control there in 2007.
A security source in Egypt initially said the crossing was closed for works which should have been completed on Friday and efforts were underway to allow through Palestinian buses.
Egyptian security and state television later said the Rafah crossing had reopened, but only for pedestrians, as the works prevented the passage of vehicles.
But Palestinian officials said the movement was one-way only and hundreds of would-be travellers out of the coastal strip had been turned back and told to move away from the frontier fence.
Egypt reopened the Rafah crossing, the only way in and out of Gaza that is not controlled by Israel, last month after it had been largely shut since June 2006 when Israel imposed a blockade after militants snatched an Israeli soldier.
The Israeli blockade was tightened in 2007 when the Islamist movement Hamas seized control of the coastal territory, with Egypt cooperating by tightly restricting movement through Rafah.
Egypt’s decision to permanently reopen Rafah came more than three months after former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak resigned following 18 days of massive street protests against his rule.
The closure came after Lebanon barred its residents from approaching the border with Israel on Sunday, when the Palestinians mark 44 years since the seizure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War.
Palestinians in Lebanon and other Arab states neighbouring Israel have said they plan to march on the Jewish state’s borders to mark the anniversary.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s public prosecutor on Saturday referred 48 people to trial for their involvement in deadly Muslim-Christian clashes last month.
The 48 accused were referred to Cairo’s supreme state security court for “premeditated murder, harming public security, inciting sectarian tension, burning a church and possessing weapons with the purpose of carrying out terror (acts),” the prosecutor’s office said.
Fierce clashes broke out on May 7 between Christians and Muslims in northwest Cairo’s working-class district of Imbaba where 12 people were killed, scores injured and a church set ablaze, according to court figures.
The National Council for Human Rights had put the death toll at 15.
Of the 48 accused, 22 are in preventative detention and the search continues for the remaining 26, the prosecutor said.
Egypt has been gripped by insecurity and sectarian strife since a revolt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak on Feb 11.
Coptic Christians, who account for up to 10 percent of Egypt’s 80-million people, complain of discrimination and have been the targets of sectarian attacks.

Also:
CAIRO: Ten people were injured in an attack on a police station in central Cairo after a bus driver was killed, Egypt’s health ministry said on Saturday.
“Most of the injuries were superficial,” following the attack on Friday during which police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters and one of their vehicles was set ablaze, ministry official Abdelhamid Abaza said in a statement.
State television said calm was restored on Saturday morning, with police armoured cars posted around the Ezbekiya station.
The bus driver was beaten up by onlookers on Thursday during a row with a policeman and died in hospital of his injuries the next day, after which his family gathered up protesters to march on the station.