CAIRO: Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least 48 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, ahead of the planned start of a polio vaccination campaign, the Palestinian health authorities said.

The United Nations is due to start vaccinating some 640,000 children in the territory against polio, relying on daily eight-hour pauses in Israeli strikes in specific areas of the besieged enclave.

Yousef Abu Al-Reesh, Gaza’s deputy minister of health, said vaccination teams would try to get to as many areas as possible to ensure wide coverage but he said only a comprehensive ceasefire could guarantee enough children are reached.

“If the international community truly wants this campaign to succeed, it should call for a ceasefire, knowing that this virus does not stop, and can reach anywhere,” he told reporters at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

If the international community truly wants this campaign to succeed, it should call for a ceasefire, says Gaza’s deputy health minister

On Saturday, medics administered vaccines to some children at Nasser Hospital wards in a symbolic move before the official campaign begins.

The campaign follows confirmation last week that a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

WHO officials say at least 90pc children need to be vaccinated twice with four weeks between doses for the campaign to succeed, but it faces huge challenges in Gaza.

On Saturday, as more than 2,000 medical and community workers prepared for the start of the campaign, medics in Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, medics said Israeli strikes killed at least 19 people, including nine members of the same family.

More than 30 other people were killed in a series of strikes in other areas of Gaza, medics said.

The Israeli military said it continued to operate in the central and southern Gaza Strip. In Khan Yunis, however, families returned to their areas after the army ended a 22-day offensive it said was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping.

Medics said they recovered at least nine bodies from the area where the army operated.

Footage showed large areas were flattened, and buildings and infrastructure destroyed.

Over the last 11 months, Israel’s assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed more than 40,600 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry.

Nearly the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been displaced and the enclave has a hunger crisis. Israel faces genocide allegations according to the International Court of Justice ruling.

In the occupied West Bank, Israel forces pushed on with a military operation in the city of Jenin. Drones and helicopters circled overhead while the sound of sporadic firing could be heard in the city.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2024