The Israeli military has reportedly killed at least 35 Palestinians across Gaza, according to Palestinian officials, following a brief and partial pause in fighting in the central part of Gaza that has allowed medics to continue the vaccination of children against polio on another day of the war.
According to the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service, four women were killed during the recent 24-hour reporting period as well as eight people near a hospital in the northern city of Gaza City, according to the most recent 24-hour reporting period.
Later in the day, nine Palestinians were killed by a suspected Israeli airstrike inside a house near Omar Al-Mokhtar Street in the heart of Gaza City, according to medics. A second strike hit a college near the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Sheikh Radwan, one of its northern suburbs. According to medics, there have been other deaths caused by air strikes throughout the territory as well.
As reported by Israel’s military, eight Palestinian gunmen, including a Hamas commander who took part in the bombings in Israel on October 7th, were killed at a command center near to the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City after they were shot by Israeli forces.
According to a statement released by Israel, Ahmed Fozi Nazer Muhammad Wadia took command of a “massacre of civilians” that was conducted in Israel’s Netiv HaAsara community near the Gaza border. No response was received from Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
There have been reports from the armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad that they have been fighting Israeli forces in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, and also in Rafah and Khan Younis in the south of the city.
Campaign to vaccinate against polio is ahead of targets
On Tuesday, the third day of a mass campaign that began on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that it had exceeded its polio vaccination targets in Gaza, and that it had vaccinated roughly one quarter of Gaza’s children under the age of 10.
There was the first confirmed polio case in the territory in more than 25 years on Sunday, which prompted a massive vaccination program to begin. According to the campaign, Israel and Hamas fighters are fighting in specific areas of the defeated enclave every eight hours during which there are breaks in the fighting.
There has been a rare ray of hope and humanity in the cascade of horror that has been accompanied by the suspension of the fight for children to be vaccinated, according to a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the French government and a leader of the France-France Friendship Party, said: “If the parties could act to protect children from a deadly virus, then, surely, they could act to protect children from the horrors of war.”
As Gaza has been left in ruins and most of its 2.3 million residents have been forced to flee their homes as a result of Israel’s military operation – many of whom are now living in cramped and unsanitary conditions as a result – the spread of diseases has accelerated.
Medical teams are dispatched to the tents of displaced persons in order to locate children who need to be vaccinated.
“Early in the morning, there were a lot of families lined up to give their children an additional protection against polio by giving them two oral drops of the vaccine,” he said.
The spokesman continued, “meanwhile, areas that have not been included in the so-called humanitarian pause policy are being bombarded constantly.”.
Due to this, people in these areas are experiencing difficulty bringing their children to vaccination centers to receive vaccinations.”
In the besieged territory, which has been devastated by almost 11 months of war, this campaign aims to provide vaccinations to at least 640,000 children.
Apolio is mainly a disease that affects children under the age of five. It can cause deformities, paralysis, and, in some cases, even death.
In an interview with Australian media outlet The Australian, Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the Palestinian territories, said it is vital the vaccination campaign reaches a coverage level of 90 percent to prevent the spread of the disease within Gaza’s borders and beyond.
As part of the campaign, the WHO has begun vaccination campaigns in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where it is expected to vaccinate 156,500 children under the age of 10 by the end of October.
There was an underestimation of our target for the central zone, according to Peeperkorn, adding that this could be due to the fact that more people have been crammed into the area than we had anticipated.
A vaccination drive was expected to be carried out in southern Gaza on Thursday with the aim of immunizing 340,000 children there with the help of the international community.
As a result, the vaccine is anticipated to be vaccinated in approximately 150,000 children in the northern part of the Strip.
In Peeperkorn’s estimation, “we still have ten days to go” with the first part of the campaign, and the promotion of the second dose of the campaign will begin in four weeks after that.
There is no question that house-to-house vaccination campaigns are the most effective method of spreading polio vaccinations, Peeperkorn said, yet it is impossible to do so in Gaza because “there are very few houses left and the population is everywhere.”
Concerned to an extreme degree
As part of his warnings, Peeperkorn explained that the WHO was “extremely concerned” about Gaza’s wider health situation in general.
Currently, 16 of 36 hospitals in the Strip are only partially operational, causing an increase in infectious diseases due to the lack of hospitals.
There have been more than one million cases of acute respiratory infections, mainly in children, Peeperkorn said. He further added that there have been over 600,000 cases of diarrhoea in children.
On October 7, Hamas led a terrorist attack against southern Israel, killing at least 1,139 people, mostly civilians, a tally based on Israeli official data, followed by Israel’s assault on Gaza.
It has been reported by Palestinian officials that in the last few months, Israel has launched an offensive on Gaza, in which at least 40,819 people have been killed, mostly women and children.
Timenews1 posted that article.
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