The Japanese government is considering offering medical care in the world's fourth-largest economy for sick and wounded residents of Gaza, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said.

Ishiba told a parliament session on Monday that his administration is working on a policy to provide support in Japan for "those who are ill or injured in Gaza".

He said that educational opportunities could also be offered to people from Gaza, which is under a fragile ceasefire with Israel.

Ishiba was responding to a lawmaker who had asked whether a 2017 scheme to accept Syrian refugees as students could be used as a reference point to help Gaza residents.

"We are thinking about launching a similar programme for Gaza, and the government will make efforts towards the realisation of this plan," Ishiba said.

The measures discussed in parliament are different to Japan's main asylum policy, which has long been criticised for the low number of claims granted by the nation.

In 2023, Japan accepted 1,310 people seeking asylum -- less than 10 percent of the 13,823 applicants.

Under a different framework, as of the end of last year, Japan had accepted a total of 82 people as students from Syria who were recognised as refugees by the UN refugee agency, a foreign ministry official in charge of aid programmes said.

That scheme was aimed at educating future leaders of Syria as part of Japan's long-term foreign aid policy, the official told AFP.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 50 Palestinian patients, including 30 children with cancer, and their companions went through the reopened Rafah crossing to Egypt on Saturday as part of the ceasefire deal, which came into effect on January 19.

The director of Gaza hospitals said 6,000 patients were ready to be transferred from the Palestinian territory, and more than 12,000 were "in dire need of treatment".

AFP

A Palestinian girl wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip is carried by medics before crossing the Rafah border into Egypt on Saturday, Feb 1, 2025. (File photo: AP/Jehad Alshrafi)

Gaza sick, wounded could get medical care in Japan: PM