The Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, today in its 394th day, hasn’t spared a polio vaccination center, as the occupation tightens the siege on the strip’s north.
The UN announced on Sunday that polio vaccination center and the car of UN aid official involved in this weekend’s vaccination campaign came under Israeli fire despite a promised “humanitarian pause” in bombardment.
Catherine Russell, the executive director of the UN child support and protection agency UNICEF, said: “At least three children were reportedly injured by another attack in the proximity of a vaccination clinic in Sheikh Radwan, while a polio vaccination campaign was under way.”
This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza.
Attacks on civilians, including humanitarian workers, and what remains of Gaza’s civilian facilities and infrastructure must stop.
My statement👇 https://t.co/TLNYtbN6du
— Catherine Russell (@unicefchief) November 2, 2024
She added that the personal car of a UNICEF employee working on the polio vaccine campaign “came under fire by what we believe to be a quadcopter”.
Russel said that in the previous 48-hour period, more than 50 children had been martyred in the Jabalia refugee camp, a focus of Israeli military operations over the past month.
“The attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic and the UNICEF staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip,” Russell said.
Meanwhile, media reports described the situation in northern Gaza Strip as horrifying, with people have been for at least three week left without food, medicine or even clean water, amid heavy bombardment of the area.
Palestinian media reported that some people in Beit Lahia and Jabalia were still under rubble, as the Israeli occupation have been preventing health workers from reaching the scene of the attacks.
Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera on Sunday that Israeli forces have been preventing medical supplies and their equipment from reaching northern Gaza.
“We call on the world to work to enable the civil defense to reach the northern Gaza Strip,” he said.
Also on Sunday, medical sources said that Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed 23 people, 13 in the north and 9 in Khan Younis, since dawn.
Breaking | According to the latest toll, at least 9 Palestinians, including 4 children, were killed and several others wounded in Israeli airstrikes near Al-Tahlia, east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. pic.twitter.com/CYNQMjXLO7
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) November 3, 2024
In latest toll, Health Ministry in Gaza announced that 43,341 Palestinians have been martyred and 102,105 have been wounded since October 7, 2023. Of the 43,341 Palestinians, more than 16,700 are children, more than a third of the overall death toll, according to health officials in the besieged territory.
Source: Palestinian media
