They arrived in Cairo late at night. Without packing and only dressed in summer clothes. The Swedish citizen Shareef Abu Watfa and his family were on the Foreign Ministry's list and were given permission to leave Gaza.
-It was very tough emotionally. I left my father, my mother, my brothers," he says, pausing for a long time.
Shareef and his family drove to the Egyptian border yesterday. After several hours of waiting, they were helped by officials from the Swedish embassy in Cairo to travel by bus the 30 km to the Egyptian capital.
Shareef Abu Watfa, who moved to Gaza in 2019 where he worked as a lawyer, is grateful for the help they received. At the same time, he experienced how the Swedish officials acted differently compared to other countries' officials.
He describes how he and his family had to pay for visas and emergency passports because they had lost everything in the bombings. According to Shareef, family members who were not Swedish citizens were not allowed to leave Gaza.
-It's miserable and very, very bad. Their arrangement in relation to this situation was not good," he says.
He describes how he saw and heard how officials from the American, Spanish and Belgian embassies were more generous to their citizens at the border.
"The U.S. arranged not only for its citizens but also for their families, and they paid for everything," Shareef said.
Now he hopes that they will get hold of plane tickets so that they can get home to Sweden as soon as possible.
"But first we're going to buy some clothes," he says.
SVT today has reached out to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an interview. They decline, but write in a comment that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs follows the requirements set by the Egyptian authorities. They also write that the work of receiving Swedes at the border and supporting them is underway with extra staff from, among others, the Swedish Migration Agency and MSB. "The work is expected to last several days and is being carried out under strained and complex circumstances."