Israeli strikes in Gaza kill more than a dozen as health workers continue polio vaccinations

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people overnight Saturday morning, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers completed the second phase of a rescue operation. urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale epidemic in the territory.

The vaccination campaign was launched after health officials confirmed the first case of polio in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, in a 10-month-old boy whose leg is now paralyzedThe nine-day campaign 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 system and much of its infrastructure.

The second phase of vaccinations in the southern Gaza Strip reached its final day on Saturday, the Gaza Health Ministry said, before moving north and ending on Monday. The ministry has designated dozens of points in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah where residents can go with their children to receive the shots.

Israel continued its military offensive. In the Nuseirat urban refugee camp in central Gaza, Al-Awda hospital said it had received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate airstrikes. One of them hit a residential building in the early hours of Saturday, killing four people and wounding at least 10, the hospital said, while five others were killed in a strike on a house in the western part of Nuseirat.

Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the main hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah city, said a woman and her two children were killed in a separate strike on a home in the nearby Bureij urban refugee camp early Saturday. In the northern Gaza Strip, an airstrike on a school converted into a shelter for displaced people in the city of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about 20 others, according to the Gaza Civil Defense Authority, which operates under the Hamas government.

The war began when Hamas and other militants launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas is still believed to be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli officials estimate that about a third of them have died.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed more than 40,000 Palestiniansaccording to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry reports that more than 94,000 people have been injured since the war began.

Violence has also increased in the occupied West Bank, with a military operation lasting more than a week in the city of Jenin leaving dozens dead and destruction in its wake.

On Friday, a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were reportedly shot dead in separate incidents in the West Bank.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, of Seattle, The young woman, who also has Turkish citizenship, died Friday after being shot in the head, two Palestinian medics said. Witnesses to the shooting said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot during a lull after clashes earlier in the afternoon.

The White House said it was “deeply troubled” by the killing and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was investigating reports that soldiers killed a foreign national by shooting an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of ​​the protest.

Separately, Palestinian health officials said Israeli gunfire killed a 13-year-old girl, Bana Laboom, in the West Bank village of Qaryout, south of Nablus, on Friday.

The Israeli military said Saturday that a “preliminary investigation indicates” that security forces were deployed to disperse a riot involving Palestinian and Israeli civilians that “included mutual stone throwing.” Security forces fired shots into the air, the military said.

“A report was received regarding a young Palestinian woman who was shot dead in the area. The incident is being investigated,” the army added.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Israeli raids are increasingattacks of Palestinian activists on the Israelis and Israeli settler attacks Attacks on Palestinians have killed more than 690 Palestinians since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel is under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is insisting on a demand that has become a major sticking point in the talks: continued Israeli control of the Gaza Strip. Philadelphia Corridora narrow strip along the Gaza-Egypt border, where Israel says Hamas is smuggling weapons into Gaza. Egypt and Hamas deny this.

Hamas has accused Israel of Months of negotiations drag on by formulating new demands, including for lasting Israeli control over the Philadelphia Corridor and a second corridor through Gaza.

Hamas has offered to release all hostages in exchange for an end to the war, a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including prominent activists – broadly the terms outlined in a draft deal presented by US President Joe Biden in July.

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Magdy reported from Cairo and Jeffery from Ramallah in the West Bank.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war on https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war