The Israeli military and Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said on Thursday.
Peeperkorn 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 zone to a fourth day if needed.
“We are ready to cooperate with international organisations to secure 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) on Wednesday said the vaccination campaign would be conducted in coordination with the Israeli military “as part of the routine humanitarian pauses that will allow the population to reach the medical centres where the vaccinations will be administered”.
Also on Thursday, the Israeli military said it had killed five more militants in a large-scale operation in the occupied West Bank, including a well-known local commander.
There was no immediate Palestinian confirmation of the death of Mohammed Jaber, also known as Abu Shujaa, a commander in the Islamic Jihad militant group in the Nur Shams refugee camp on the outskirts of the city of Tulkarem.
He became a hero for many Palestinians earlier this year when he was reported killed in an Israeli operation, only to make a surprise appearance at the funeral of other militants, where he was hoisted on to the shoulders of a cheering crowd.
The raids drew alarm from the UN and neighbouring Jordan, as well as from British and French leaders, who stressed the urgency of ceasefire in Gaza after nearly 11 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Doctors at al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza said on Thursday eight Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded from Israeli strikes on the crowded Nuseirat refugee camp.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7 when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
