Some 40,000 vaccines are on their way to the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan, a former Fatah top official and main political rival of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, announced Wednesday.

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The vaccines were sponsored by the United Arab Emirates, where Dahlan has been residing since his expulsion from Ramallah in 2011. 

The Sputnik V vaccines are expected to arrive in the strip via Egypt on Thursday. Gaza had previously received 20,000 doses, so together with the inoculations donated by the UAE, it will be able to vaccinate 30,000 of its residents.

In a Facebook post, Dahlan explained that the vaccines would be administered to healthcare staff and the at-risk population.

According to Wafa, the official Palestinian newspaper, in the past 24 hours, 2,331 Gazans tested positive for the coronavirus, and 27 died. 

Palestinian sourced reported Wednesday that a top official from Dahlan's Democratic Reform Bloc, Ghassan Jadallah, has visited Gaza. Several of Dahlan's associates have been returning to the strip to prepare for the upcoming Palestinian elections scheduled for May 22. 

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Arrest warrants have been issued for Dahlan on accusations of playing a role in the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey, seeking to change the constitutional order by force, and various spying-related charges, the ministry said in a statement.

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Dahlan has also recently been an outspoken critic of Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan.

Turkey accuses US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen and his followers of carrying out the failed putsch of July 2016, when rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks, and helicopters in a bid to seize power in which some 250 people were killed.

Dahlan has lived in the United Arab Emirates since he was driven out of the Palestinian territories in 2011 after a row with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

He was formerly an elected member of Abbas' Fatah party central committee and was a fierce foe of Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip and which has forged close ties with Turkey.

Dahlan's party condemned the Turkish move.

"The Democratic Reform Party in Fatah movement views the Turkish decision as a paid incitement to ... assassinate Palestinian leader Mohammed Dahlan, and announces its intentions to prosecute Erdoğan's regime inside and outside of Turkey," it said in a statement.

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