A campaign to vaccinate children in Gaza against polio and prevent the spread of the virus began on Saturday, a day ahead of the large-scale rollout and planned temporary pause in fighting agreed by Israel and the United Nations World Health Organization.
Children in Gaza have begun receiving vaccines, the Strip’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry announced at a news conference. Associated Press reporters saw about 10 babies receiving doses of the vaccine at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Saturday afternoon, local time.
“I was terrified and waiting for the vaccine to come and everyone to get it,” said Amal Shaheen, whose daughter received a dose.
Abdel Kareem Hana / AP
The UN’s World Health Organization had said earlier this week that Israel was expected to suspend some of its operations in Gaza from Sunday to allow health workers to continue their campaign. administer polio vaccines to approximately 650,000 Palestinian children.
“There must be a ceasefire so that the teams can reach everyone targeted in this campaign,” said Dr. Yousef Abu Al-Rish, the deputy health minister, as he described images of sewage flowing through overcrowded tent camps in Gaza.
However, in a statement Saturday night, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “reports of a general ceasefire to administer polio vaccines in Gaza are false.”
Instead, Netanyahu’s office said Israel will allow “only a humanitarian corridor” for the transit of polio vaccines to Gaza.
“There will be demarcated areas that are safe for administering the vaccines for a few hours,” Netanyahu’s office said. “Israel considers it important to prevent the outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip, including the goal of preventing the spread of epidemics throughout the region.”
Abdel Kareem Hana / AP
UN officials had said the pause would last at least nine hours and was the result of an agreement with the WHO, separate from ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Israel, Hamas and regional mediators.
Campaign targets children who missed vaccinations
The campaign comes after 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was left partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their feces, scientists say. The baby boy was not vaccinated because he was born just before Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attack Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory offensive against Gaza.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of children who have not received their vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
The boy’s mother, Neveen Abu El Jidyan, said CBS News on Tuesday She has been able to do very little for her son because of the appalling conditions in the camp for displaced Palestinians where they live.
“We haven’t given him any treatment. We’re living in a tent and there’s no medication,” El Jidyan, 35, told CBS News.
El Jidyan, who has nine other children, was forced to move with her family from northern Gaza to a tent in Deir el-Balah because of the war.
Abdul Rahman was developing normally and could almost walk, El Jidyan said, when he started vomiting and developed a fever.
“I took him to the hospital and they told me there was nothing they could do for me. They know his condition, but there is no treatment,” she told CBS News. “When the virus hit him, he changed overnight.”
El Jidyan said the unsanitary conditions her family is forced to live in are the cause of her son’s illness.
“Our living conditions — we don’t have clean water, clean food. We live in a tent and nothing is clean here,” she said.
Polio has been eradicated in most parts of the world as part of a decades-long effort by WHO and partners to eliminate the disease.
Healthcare workers in Gaza warn of the potential for a polio outbreak for monthsas the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been exacerbated by the war that broke out after Hamas-led militants invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting about 250. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, the Israeli retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. The ministry did not say how many militants were killed.
Palestinians remain tense
Hours earlier, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that hospitals had admitted 89 dead on Saturday, including 26 who died in an overnight Israeli bombardment, and 205 wounded — one of the highest daily tolls in months.
Meanwhile, parts of the West Bank remained tense Saturday as the Israeli army continued its massive military campaign, the deadliest since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. Two car bombings by Palestinian militants near Israeli settlements wounded three soldiers.
Two car bombs exploded early Saturday in Gush Etzion, a bloc of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli military killed both Palestinian attackers after the bombs exploded in a compound in Karmei Zur and at a gas station, the Israeli military said. Three Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded.
Palestinian health officials said Israel was holding the bodies of the attackers, whose names were Muhammad Marqa and Zoodhi Afifeh.
Majdi Mohammed / AP
Hamas did not claim the men as its fighters but called the attack a “heroic operation” and a “new blow to the security system of the occupation” in a statement early Saturday. The Palestinian militant group said earlier this month after a bombing in Tel Aviv that it would continue such attacks.
The bombings came as Israel continued its large-scale assault — which has included destruction of infrastructure, airstrikes and gun battles — on urban refugee camps in the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarem in the restive West Bank. About 20 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli incursion began on Tuesday, raising alarm among the international community that the war could spread beyond the Gaza Strip.
Israel has described the operation as a strategy to prevent attacks on Israeli civilians, which have increased in the West Bank since the war began, including near settlements that the international community largely considers illegal. In return, the Palestinian Health Ministry noted an increase in Palestinian deaths at the hands of Israeli forces, with 663 dead in the West Bank in the nearly 11 months since the war began.
In central Gaza, Israeli airstrikes hit a multi-story building housing displaced people in and around Nuseirat, a refugee camp in central Gaza, further south in Khan Younis and north in Gaza City, hospital officials in the three areas reported Saturday morning.
The dead included a doctor, his family and a child whose right leg had been amputated, according to an initial list of hospital casualties and images released Saturday by civil defense officials operating under Gaza’s Hamas-led government.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have tried for months to broker a ceasefire that would free the remaining hostages. But the talks have repeatedly stalled as Netanyahu has vowed “total victory” over Hamas and the militant group has demanded a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal from the area.
