GAZA, (PIC)
Israel has continued its military attacks on the Gaza Strip during its polio vaccination campaign, ignoring all calls to implement a humanitarian truce or a temporary halt to attacks during the vaccination hours, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a statement issued on Sunday.
The report pointed out that the Israeli aircraft and tanks continue to bomb the central Gaza Strip, the area where the polio vaccination campaign has begun.
The campaign is a joint effort between the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the United Nations, including UNICEF, and non-governmental organizations, aiming to vaccinate about 640,000 Palestinian children under the age of 10. The campaign was launched in response to the confirmation of the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years, contracted by a 10-month-old infant in Deir al-Balah, in the central part of the Strip. The virus was found in water samples taken in Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah in late June.
Despite the World Health Organization’s announcement last Thursday that Israel had consented to a series of “humanitarian truces” lasting three days each in the central, southern, and northern sections of the Strip in order to carry out a polio vaccination campaign that would benefit 640,000 children, Israel has continued its attacks.
Palestinian Rami Rashad Nofal has been killed, and several other Palestinians injured, during an Israeli air strike on Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, which was also the target of artillery shelling and at least three raids, the report reads.
Together with shooting from Israeli vehicles that broke through the northwest of Nuseirat and from quadcopter aircraft, Israeli artillery also shelled the west of the new camp in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip.
“Along with the ongoing shelling in various parts of the Strip, these Israeli military attacks have coincided with the peak of families’ movement with their children towards the designated vaccination centers. Some of these attacks have even targeted locations near the vaccination center, endangering the progress of the vaccination process that is required to stop the poliovirus from spreading among Palestinian children in the besieged enclave.”
“Following its initial attacks, Israel is still targeting Palestinian clinics and hospitals where Palestinians are supposed to go for children’s vaccinations. The most recent incident took place at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on Saturday 31 August, leaving three Palestinians killed and numerous others injured.”
Euro-Med called on the international community to pressure Israel to immediately cease its military assaults in order to guarantee that the polio vaccination campaign is carried out as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
It also held Israel fully responsible for protecting the lives and safety of Palestinian children from the virus, as this crisis is primarily the result of the crime of genocide it has been committing against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, which includes the destruction of basic infrastructure and the health sector, repeated forced displacement, and deprivation of all elements of human life, in addition to the ongoing arbitrary and comprehensive blockade.
Meanwhile, director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said that “the best vaccine for Gaza’s children is peace.”
This came in a post on the “X” platform, saying that children in Gaza started receiving much-needed polio vaccines on Sunday.
