Despite agreed upon pause for vaccination campaign, Israel strikes health center in Gaza City, paramedics tell WAFA

After reports emerged that an Israeli airstrike on Saturday hit a primary healthcare center in northwest Gaza’s Sheikh Radwan that was providing polio vaccinations to Palestinian children, the World Health Organization’s director spoke out on Saturday evening to express concern.

Israel had agreed to a temporary humanitarian pause to fire in Gaza City beginning on Saturday and geared to allow for the completion of an urgent polio vaccination campaign for children in the strip following an outbreak detected in the summer.

Anas al-Sharif, a journalist for Al Jazeera in north Gaza, said on Saturday that a quadcopter had targeted the clinic while children and their families were there to receive vaccinations, and a correspondent for the Palestine News and Information Agency (Wafa) reported that three injured children were transported to a hospital in Gaza City, citing paramedics.

WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that six people were reported injured in the attack, including four children, and that a WHO team had been present at the site shortly beforehand.

“This attack, during a humanitarian pause, jeopardizes the sanctity of health protection for children and may deter parents from bringing their children for vaccination,” Ghebreyesus said.

The second phase of the polio vaccination campaign was launched in north Gaza on Saturday, after being implemented in other areas across the strip in October, with hundreds of children coming to receive immunization against the life-threatening infection.

The Occupation agreed to allow the campaign’s implementation in Gaza City’s west, although it did not allow health agencies to conduct the campaign in some parts of the city, including the Saftawy, Shujaiya and Tofah neighborhoods in the north and east, and Tal al-Hawa and Zeitoun in the south, which it classified as “red zones,” Gaza Health Ministry deputy Maher Shamiya told Mada Masr. 

Agencies were also unable to conduct the campaign in the North Gaza Governorate following its invasion by Israeli forces almost a month ago, with constant fire from the air and at street level hampering the movement of emergency vehicles, let alone the international agencies supporting the implementation of the vaccination campaign.

Occupation forces had not responded to requests for coordination from the WHO and UNICEF to conduct the campaign in designated red zones, Shamiya told Mada Masr.

Around a third of the children who should have been vaccinated — 130,000 children in the Gaza and North Gaza governorates — will miss out on the campaign as a result, he said.

Clashes continue in northern Gaza. The Israeli military announced on Sunday that one of its soldiers had been killed by the explosion of a hand grenade, while three other soldiers were announced killed on Saturday, according to Israeli media reports. Israeli airstrikes meanwhile killed three Palestinians in Jabalia to the east of Gaza City and six Palestinians in Beit Lahia to the northeast of the city, according to Wafa.

The second phase of the two-part vaccination campaign reached around 71 percent of its intended participants across the strip, according to the United Nations agency for humanitarian affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The first round of the campaign was launched in various governorates of the Gaza Strip on September 1, aiming to vaccinate around 640,000 children.

The campaign saw turnout from most parents who were keen for their children to receive the immunization.

Israeli forces obstructed the first round of the campaign in various neighborhoods in the northern governorates of the strip, Director General of Primary Health at the Gaza Health Ministry, Musa Abed, told Mada Masr at the time.

Not vaccinating so many children threatens the success of the entire campaign, which has been conducted across the strip over the past three months and places residents in neighboring countries at risk of contracting the virus, the Gaza Health Ministry said.