TEHRAN, Oct. 19 (MNA) – Russia on Thursday sent 27 tons of humanitarian aid for civilians in the Gaza Strip to be transported from Egypt, Moscow's Emergency Situations Ministry said.

"A special plane has taken off from the airport at Ramenskoye near Moscow for El-Arish in Egypt. The Russian humanitarian aid will be handed over to the Egyptian Red Crescent to be sent to the Gaza Strip," Deputy Minister Ilya Denisov said in a statement, The Moscow Times reports.

Denisov said the aid comprised "wheat, sugar, rice [and] pasta."

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled a deal to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, where 1 million people have fled their homes amid withering Israeli air strikes.

The US president’s trip to the occupied territories was overshadowed by a horrifying Israeli airstrike on a hospital in central Gaza that left at least 500 Palestinians dead, mostly women and children.

After face-to-face talks in Occupied Lands and intense telephone diplomacy with Egypt, Biden said a limited number of trucks would be allowed to cross the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza from Friday.

RHM/PR