The French helicopter carrier Dixmudewhich has been set up to provide hospital support to wounded civilians from the Gaza Strip, today received “the first patients who are in a relatively urgent situation” at the Egyptian port of Al-Arish, French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecorny announced today on television CNEWS network.

“Tonight we have the first patients who are in a relatively urgent condition, whom we have welcomed on board,” said Lecorny, expressing satisfaction that France is “the first Western power to have means of medical care so close to the Gaza Strip.”

The hospital structure of the ship, which docked at the Egyptian port on Monday, includes two operating theaters, 40 beds and 80 nurses, tomographers and laboratories, the minister explained.

France has already transported “more than 100 tons” of humanitarian aid since the start of the war, mostly by military aircraft, he recalled.

As part of the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas to allow the release of hostages, several hundred trucks with humanitarian aid were also able to enter the Gaza Strip from Friday through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, and a some of them reached the northern part of the Palestinian enclave — which has suffered the most damage.

Large convoys of humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip today, according to images released by AFP. But “the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains catastrophic,” UN Middle East envoy Tor Wensland said.