Gaza City - Dozens of patients, many of them children, who need urgent treatment abroad have been unable to leave the Gaza Strip via Egypt over the past days, their relatives said Monday.

The West Bank-based administration of caretaker Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was no longer handing out the necessary paperwork to allow them passage through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, they said.

Egypt does not recognize the authority of Hamas, the radical Islamic movement which seized sole control of Gaza 18 months ago by overpowering security forces answering to Abbas, of the rival secular Fatah movement.

Thus far, hundreds of Palestinians injured in Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza have been transferred via Rafah to hospitals in Egypt and elsewhere during and after the war, which ended Sunday last week with Israel declaring a unilateral ceasefire.

Cairo however recognizes only Abbas' administration as the legitimate one and anyone passing through its border crossing with Gaza therefore required documentation from the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.

The ministry however issued a statement on Thursday, expressing its "sincere gratitude" to all countries hosting injured children from Gaza, but adding it now wanted "to provide and ensure treatment for the injured children in Gaza close to their families and friends."

"We therefore see no more reason to refer anymore children for treatment abroad," said the statement.

Hamas and Fatah have been locked in a bitter power struggle since the former beat the latter in democratic parliamentary elections in January 2006, one year after Abbas was elected in separate presidential elections on a contrasting platform calling for a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel.

The power struggle culminated in Hamas' violent take-over of Gaza in June 2008. Egypt and world leaders have been calling on the two rival parties to hold reconciliation talks to end the West Bank-Gaza split that resulted from the take-over.

Egypt has said it will not fully open its Rafah crossing with Gaza until Abbas' security forces are able to retake their positions on the Palestinian side of the border. A deal on Rafah is part of the Egyptian and international efforts to reach a long-term truce in Gaza. (dpa)