A Palestinian man is comforted as he mourns over the bodies of family members victims of Israeli bombardment, on September 7, 2024, in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. AFP
The vaccination drive was launched after health officials confirmed the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, in a 10-month-old boy whose leg is now paralyzed.
The nine-day campaign run by the UN health agency and its partners began last Sunday in central Gaza and aims to vaccinate 640,000 children under the age of 10, an ambitious effort during a devastating war that has destroyed Gaza's health care system and much of its infrastructure.
The second phase of vaccinations in the southern part of the strip was in its final day Saturday, the Gaza Health Ministry said, before moving to the north and concluding on Monday. The ministry designated dozens of points across the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah for people to visit with their children to receive the vaccines.
Israel meanwhile kept up its army attack. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it had received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate air raids.
One had hit a residential building in the early hours of Saturday, killing four people and wounding at least 10, the hospital said, while another five people were killed in a strike on a house in the western part of Nuseirat.
Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah, said a woman and her two children were killed in another strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij early Saturday.
In the northern part of the Gaza Strip, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority.
Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground invasion have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry.
The ministry added that more than 94,000 others have been wounded since the start of the war in October.
Violence against Palestinians has also spiked in the occupied West Bank, with the occupation army assault on the town of Jenin lasting more than a week, leaving dozens dead and a trail of destruction.
On Friday, a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were shot and killed by the Israeli army in separate incidents in the West Bank.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26. of Seattle, who also holds Turkish nationality, died after being shot in the head on Friday, two Palestinian doctors said. Witnesses to the shooting said she had posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot during a moment of calm following clashes earlier in the afternoon.
The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and has called on Israel to investigate.
Separately, Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire had killed a 13-year-old girl, Bana Laboom, in the West Bank village of Qaryout, south of Nablus, on Friday.
More than 500,000 Israeli colonial settlers are living in illegal settlements in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Increasing Israeli raids and attacks by Israeli terrorist settlers on West Bank Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since October.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a ceasefire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on a demand that has emerged as a major sticking point in talks — continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out months of negotiations by issuing new demands, including for lasting Israeli control over both the Philadelphi corridor and a second corridor running across Gaza.
Hamas has offered to release all captives in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by US President Joe Biden in July.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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