Egypt reopened its Rafah border with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Wednesday for two days to enable students and the sick to cross, a security official told a foreign news agency. "The border has opened for two days to allow the passage of Palestinian students and the sick who are stuck on the Egyptian side," the border official said, asking not to be named. The Rafah crossing is the only one that bypasses Israel but has been largely closed since June 2006, when Gaza militants captured an Israeli soldier in a deadly cross-border raid. Since then, Israel has tightened its blockade on the impoverished enclave where most of the 1.4 million inhabitants survive on foreign aid, particularly since Hamas seized control in June 2007. "Palestinian patients who finished their treatment at Egyptian hospitals and other humanitarian cases will be allowed to return back home," Egypt's official MENA news agency quoted Palestinian embassy official Mohammed Arafat as saying on Monday.