Polio vaccine campaign begins in Gaza as strikes continue and West Bank remains on edge
Polio vaccine campaign begins in Gaza as strikes continue and West Bank remains on edge
A campaign to inoculate children in Gaza against polio and prevent the spread of the virus began on Saturday as Palestinians there and in the occupied West Bank reeled from Israel’s ongoing campaigns in both regions
Children in Gaza began receiving vaccines on Saturday, the Strip’s health ministry announced in a news conference, a day before the large-scale rollout and planned pause in fighting agreed to by Israel and the United Nations World Health Organization.
Associated Press reporters saw roughly ten infants receiving doses of vaccine in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on Saturday afternoon.
Hours earlier, Gaza's Health Ministry said hospitals received 89 dead on Saturday, including 26 who died in an overnight Israeli bombardment, and 205 wounded — one of the highest daily tallies in months.
Israel has described the operation as a strategy to prevent attacks on Israeli civilians, which since the start of the war have increased in the West Bank, including near settlements that the international community largely considers illegal. In return, the Palestinian Health Ministry noted a surge in Palestinian deaths by Israeli forces, with 663 killed 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 built-up refugee camp in central Gaza, further south in Khan Younis and northward in Gaza City, officials at hospitals in the three areas said on Saturday morning.
Among the dead were a physician and his family and a child whose right leg had been previously amputated, according to an initial list of casualties from the hospital and footage released on Saturday by civil defense officials who operated under Gaza's Hamas-run government.
So even Israel's claimed reason for the attack on West Bank is because of Palestinians defending and retaliating against violent illegals in their country?
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