Polio vaccine campaign begins in Gaza a day before an expected pause in fighting
JERUSALEM (AP) — A campaign to inoculate children in Gaza against polio and prevent the spread of the virus began on Saturday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said, as Palestinians in both the Hamas-governed enclave and the occupied West Bank reeled from Israel’s ongoing military offensives.
Children in Gaza began receiving vaccines, the health ministry told a news conference, a day before the large-scale vaccine rollout and planned pause in fighting agreed to by Israel and the U.N. World Health Organization. The WHO confirmed the larger campaign would begin Sunday.
“There must be a cease-fire so that the teams can reach everyone targeted by this campaign,” said Dr. Yousef Abu Al-Rish, deputy health minister, describing scenes of sewage running through crowded tent camps in Gaza.
Associated Press journalists saw about 10 infants receiving vaccine doses at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Israel is expected to pause some operations in Gaza on Sunday to allow health workers to administer vaccines to some 650,000 Palestinian children. Officials said the pause would last at least nine hours and is unrelated to ongoing cease-fire negotiations.
“We will vaccinate up to 10-year-olds and God willing we will be fine,” said Dr. Bassam Abu Ahmed, general coordinator of public health programs at Al-Quds University.
The three-day vaccination campaign comes after the first polio case in 25 years in Gaza was discovered this month. Doctors concluded a 10-month-old had been partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus after not being vaccinated due to fighting.
Healthcare workers in Gaza have been warning of the potential for a polio outbreak for months. The humanitarian crisis has deepened during the war that broke out after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and abducting around 250. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were militants.
Hours earlier, the Health Ministry said hospitals received 89 dead on Saturday, including 26 who died in an overnight Israeli bombardment, and 205 wounded — one of the highest daily tallies in months.
Meanwhile, parts of the West Bank remained on edge as Israel’s military continued its large-scale military campaign, the deadliest since the Israel-Hamas war began, and two car bombings by Palestinian militants near Israeli settlements left three soldiers injured.
The two car bombs exploded in Gush Etzion, a bloc of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel’s military killed both Palestinian attackers after the explosions in a compound in Karmei Tzur and at a gas station, Israel’s military said. Three Israeli soldiers had minor injuries.
Palestinian health officials said Israel was holding the bodies of the attackers, naming the men as Muhammad Marqa and Zoodhi Afifeh.
Hamas did not claim the men as its fighters but called the attack a “heroic operation.” The Palestinian militant group said earlier this month after a bombing attack in Tel Aviv that it would continue such attacks.
The bombings took place as Israel continued its large-scale raid — which includes destruction of infrastructure, airstrikes and gunbattles — into urban refugee camps in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarem, in the north of the volatile West Bank. About 20 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s incursion started Tuesday, causing alarm among the international community that the war might widen beyond Gaza.
“Many people are in need of assistance and we cannot reach them,” said Jenin governor Kamal Abu-al Rub.
Israel has described the operation as a strategy to prevent attacks on Israeli civilians, which since the start of the war have increased in the West Bank, including near settlements that the international community largely considers illegal. The Palestinian Health Ministry noted a surge in Palestinian deaths by Israeli forces, with 663 killed in the West Bank in the nearly 11 months since the war in Gaza began.
In central Gaza, Israeli airstrikes hit a multi-story building housing displaced people in and around Nuseirat, a built-up refugee camp, further south in Khan Younis and in Gaza City, officials at hospitals in the three areas said.
Among the dead were a doctor and his family and a child, according to an initial list of casualties from the hospital and footage released by civil defense officials who operate under Gaza’s Hamas-run government.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months trying to mediate a cease-fire that would see the remaining hostages released. But the talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed “total victory” over Hamas and the militant group has demanded a lasting cease-fire and a full withdrawal from the territory.
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Magdy reported from Cairo and Metz from Rabat, Morocco.