The UN Security Council will meet later on Thursday to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza. | Photo: ANI
The Israeli military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zone-specific three-day pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said on Thursday.
The vaccination campaign is set to begin on Sunday, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s top official for the Palestinian territories. He said the agreement was that breaks would take place between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. (0300-1200 GMT). He said the campaign would start in central Gaza with a three-day pause in fighting, then move to southern Gaza, where there would be another three-day pause, followed by northern Gaza. Peeperkorn added that there was an agreement to extend the humanitarian pause in each area to a fourth day if necessary.
The WHO confirmed on August 23 that at least one baby had been paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years. The UN Security Council will meet later on Thursday to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“We are ready to cooperate with international organisations to ensure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters.
The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit (COGAT) said Wednesday that the vaccination drive would be carried out in coordination with the Israeli military “as part of routine humanitarian pauses that will allow the population to reach medical centers where the vaccines will be administered.” The latest bloodshed in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, when the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-ruled enclave has since killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people, causing a hunger crisis and leading to accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice that Israel denies.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: August 29, 2024 | 11:47 PM IS
Disclaimer:
The information contained in this post is for general information purposes only. We make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the post for any purpose.
We respect the intellectual property rights of content creators. If you are the owner of any material featured on our website and have concerns about its use, please contact us. We are committed to addressing any copyright issues promptly and will remove any material within 2 days of receiving a request from the rightful owner.