Israeli forces killed 33 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours battling Hamas-led militants, Palestinian officials said Tuesday, but brief lulls in the fighting allowed doctors to carry out a third day of polio vaccinations for children.
According to the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service, the victims included four women in the southern city of Rafah and eight people near a hospital in the northern Gaza city. Others were killed in separate air strikes in the territory, the service said.
The Israeli military said it killed eight Palestinian gunmen, including a senior Hamas commander who took part in the October 7 attacks in Israel, at a command center near Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
A statement said Ahmed Fozi Nazer Muhammad Wadia had taken command of a “massacre of civilians carried out by Hamas terrorists” in the Israeli community of Netiv HaAsara, near the Gaza border. There was no response from Hamas.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they were fighting Israeli forces in the Gaza City suburb of Zeitoun, as well as in Rafah and Khan Younis in the south.
However, on Tuesday, the third day of a mass campaign, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was ahead of its polio vaccination targets in Gaza and had vaccinated about a quarter of children under 10.
The campaign, accelerated by the discovery of the first case of polio in a Gaza child last month, depends on daily eight-hour lulls in fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in specific areas of the besieged enclave.
However, diplomatic efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire and release foreign and Israeli hostages held in Gaza and return many Palestinians imprisoned by Israel have stalled.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israeli troops will remain in the Philadelphia Corridor at the southern tip of Gaza, a major sticking point in reaching a deal to end the fighting and return hostages.
Hamas, which wants a deal to end the war and see Israeli forces out of the entire Gaza Strip, says this condition, among others, would prevent a deal. Netanyahu says the war can only end when Hamas is eradicated.
POLIO CAMPAIGN
The United Nations (UN), in collaboration with local health authorities, has begun the third day of a complex campaign to vaccinate some 640,000 children in Gaza.
Rik Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, told reporters in Geneva that more than 161,000 children under 10 years of age had been vaccinated in the central region in the first two days of the campaign, compared to an expected 150,000.
“So far, things are going well,” he said. “These humanitarian pauses are working so far. We still have 10 days to go.”
He said some children in southern Gaza were outside the agreed pause zone and that negotiations continued to reach them.
Palestinians say a major reason for the return of polio is the collapse of the health system and the destruction of most of Gaza’s hospitals. Israel accuses Hamas of using the hospitals for military purposes, which the Islamist group denies.
Source: Terra
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