Palestinian children arriving for their vaccinations at a hospital in Gaza City on Saturday.
Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Thousands of Children in Gaza Get 2nd Dose of Polio Vaccine

Aid agencies said that children in some areas of northern Gaza where Israel is mounting an offensive against Hamas will miss the doses, compromising the effectiveness of the campaign.

by · NY Times

Nearly 94,000 children in Gaza City received a second dose of polio vaccine this weekend in an effort that was delayed by intense Israeli bombardment and mass evacuation orders in northern Gaza, the Gazan health ministry said.

The second phase of the vaccination campaign was originally set to begin on Oct. 23 across the north of the territory, but it was postponed because of a lack of assurances about pauses in the fighting and bombardment to ensure the safety of health workers, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said in a statement on Friday.

The first round of vaccinations in September covered all of northern Gaza. Since then, the Israeli military has launched an intense offensive in the area against what it has said is a resurgence of Hamas.

A humanitarian pause for the second and final phase of the vaccination campaign was only assured for Gaza City, according to the U.N. agencies. They said that around 15,000 children under 10 in northern towns where the Israeli military has been carrying out the offensive over the last few weeks “remain inaccessible and will be missed during the campaign, compromising its effectiveness.”

The Gazan Health Ministry said that as of Saturday, 437,774 children under 10 had received the second dose of the vaccine across the whole Gaza Strip. The campaign is scheduled to continue through Monday.

The vaccination campaign was not entirely without incident, according to humanitarian officials.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said on X that his agency had received a report that six people, including four children, were wounded on Saturday when one of the health care centers distributing the vaccines was struck “in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed.” He did not say who had struck the clinic.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, replied to that post on X, saying that an initial review by the military showed it had not struck in that area at that time.

UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, said separately that the vehicle of one of its staff members who was working on the polio campaign “came under fire by what we believe to be a quadcopter” while driving in northern Gaza on Saturday. The agency said that although the staff member was not injured, the attack illustrated the “grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip.” The Israeli military said it would need further details to assess the incident.

Aid agencies sought to start a vaccination campaign in Gaza after traces of poliovirus were found in local wastewater in July, and a 10-month-old boy was confirmed in August to be the first resident of Gaza to be paralyzed by poliovirus in 25 years.

In September, temporary pauses in the war agreed to by Israel and Hamas allowed aid workers to immunize about 640,000 children under 10 who were at risk of the disease. The campaign began in central Gaza, then moved to the south and ended in the northern area.

The situation in northern Gaza, where children were deprived of receiving their second dose of the vaccine, remained dire on Sunday as Israeli forces pressed on with a weekslong offensive in three major areas. The Israeli military said its troops killed dozens of militants in Jabaliya, one of the hardest-hit areas in the north.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian civil defense, said in a statement that their work and other medical services have been halted in northern Gaza, and that they “have not been allowed to resume rescue and recovery operations.” He added that more than 100,000 people were trapped in northern Gaza “without food, water, or medicine” and were in “dire need of life-sustaining resources.”

In a statement Sunday to aid groups and the U.N., the Gazan health ministry warned of what it called an ongoing “fierce attack” by Israeli forces on northern Gaza “and the tightening of the siege” on the area and its hospitals.

The Israeli military denied that it was not allowing aid into northern Gaza, and said in response that its forces have been operating to dismantle Hamas infrastructure. “Given the increased flow of humanitarian aid and goods into northern Gaza in recent months, food stocks are available in various warehouses throughout northern Gaza,” the military said.

The Israeli military said in a statement early on Monday that on Sunday, a humanitarian convoy providing aid and evacuating patients was hit by shrapnel from a detonation as it passed in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, adding that Israeli officials had been in touch with the W.H.O. and had “clarified this was an explosive device planted by the terrorist organizations in Gaza.” Six children were injured by the detonation and there was damage to the hospital roof and courtyard, the military said.

Here’s what else is happening in the Middle East:

  • Suspected security breach: Israeli authorities are investigating a potential high-level security breach that may have hampered previous attempts to reach a cease-fire agreement, and on Sunday a court released the name of a person suspected of involvement. The case revolves around the leaking, manipulation and potential fabrication of intelligence information published by international news media. The suspect recently worked as a spokesman in the office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the purported intelligence he was accused of sharing seemed to lend credence to Mr. Netanyahu’s reasoning for rejecting a cease-fire in Gaza in early September. At the time, there was intense pressure from the Israeli public to close a deal with Hamas to release the hostages and end the fighting in the enclave.
  • Syrian detained: Israel’s military said on Sunday that it had detained a Syrian citizen working with Iran in an operation in Syria conducted in “recent months.” Ali Soleiman al-Assi, who the Israeli military said had been “transferred for interrogation” in Israel, was working as an “Iranian terror network operative” and his detention had prevented a “future attack,” the military said. On Sunday, Israel’s prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu, speaking from Israel’s northern border about Hezbollah in Lebanon, said “cutting Hezbollah’s oxygen line from Iran via Syria” was key to Israel’s security.
  • Hezbollah rockets: About 105 rockets fired from Lebanon crossed into northern Israel on Sunday, the Israeli military said. Some had been intercepted while others fell in open areas, the military noted. Hezbollah began firing on Israel last year in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Israeli ground troops invaded southern Lebanon around a month ago, part of a campaign to cripple Hezbollah’s forces and infrastructure in the area.
  • Strikes in Lebanon: Lebanon’s Ministry of Health reported at least seven deaths in two different strikes on Sunday and said that two hospitals were damaged by Israeli strikes, one of them severely. The World Health Organization in Lebanon on Sunday said that continued attacks on health facilities in the country were “leading to a decline in availability and accessibility of lifesaving health services.”
  • U.S. bombers: The Pentagon has repositioned B-52 Stratofortress bombers from the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota closer to the Middle East, according to the United States Central Command. It did not say how many bombers had been moved, or where they are stationed, but the deployment is consistent with U.S. efforts to deter Iran from launching a retaliatory attack on Israel.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Ephrat Livni and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.

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