At least 48 people were killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said, as clashes broke out in the territory’s central and southern regions ahead of the planned start of a polio vaccination campaign.
The United Nations is set to begin vaccinating some 640,000 children in the region against polio, relying on eight-hour interruptions from daily fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas in specific areas of the besieged zone.
Gaza Deputy Health Minister Yusuf Abu al-Reesh said vaccination teams would try to reach as many areas as possible to ensure widespread coverage, but added that only a comprehensive ceasefire could ensure that enough children could access the vaccine.
“If the international community really wants this campaign to succeed, it should call a ceasefire, because it knows this virus is unstoppable and can spread anywhere,” he told reporters at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
On Saturday, before the official campaign began, doctors symbolically vaccinated a few children in some wards of Nasser Hospital.
The campaign was launched after it was confirmed last week that a child was left partially paralysed by type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in the region in 25 years.
World Health Organization officials say at least 90% of children need to be vaccinated twice, with a four-week gap between doses, for the campaign to be successful, but it faces major challenges in Gaza, which has been largely destroyed by nearly 11 months of war.
On Saturday, as more than 2,000 medical and community workers were preparing for the start of the operation, doctors in Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, reported that at least 19 people were killed in separate Israeli attacks, including nine members of the same family.
Doctors said more than 30 people were killed in attacks in other areas of Gaza.
Fighters from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups also fought Israeli forces in the Zeitoun area of ​​northern Gaza, where tanks have been operating for several days, and in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, residents and militant sources said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it was continuing operations in the central and southern Gaza Strip. It said troops killed militants and destroyed military infrastructure in Gaza City, while they found weapons and killed gunmen in Tel al-Sultan in western Rafah.
Families return to their areas after the army ended a 22-day offensive in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip that the army says was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping. Footage shows large areas devastated and buildings and infrastructure destroyed.
Doctors said they had recovered at least nine bodies from the area where the army carried out the operation.
The latest incident in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli figures show.
More than 40,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on Hamas-ruled territory, according to the local health ministry. Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been displaced and there is a hunger crisis in the region. Israel has been accused of genocide at the World Court, which it denies.
In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army carried out military operations in the city of Jenin. Drones and helicopters were circling overhead, while sporadic gunfire could be heard in the city.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
