Portugal is preparing to evacuate 16 Portuguese nationals and “a wider group” of Palestinians with links to the country via Egypt from the Gaza Strip, the minister of foreign affairs announced in Brussels today. “We’ve been in constant contact with the Israeli and Egyptian authorities since the beginning and what we have is the possibility of taking them in temporarily, for two or three days, in Egypt and bringing them to Portugal. I wouldn’t want to dramatise it with that kind of terminology, a rescue operation, it’s simply the removal of Portuguese people from Egypt, from the moment they can leave Gaza,” said the minister.
