Israel continues attacks on Gaza during polio vaccine campaign

Israel has continued to bomb Gaza during the polio vaccine campaign, ignoring calls to implement a humanitarian truce or a temporary halt to attacks as vaccinations are being administered, Euro-Med Monitor said yesterday.

“Israeli aircraft and tanks continue to bomb the central Gaza Strip, the area where the polio vaccination campaign has begun,” the rights group said. The campaign is a joint effort between the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the United Nations, including UNICEF, and non-governmental organisations, aiming to vaccinate about 640,000 Palestinian children under the age of ten.

The campaign was launched after a ten-month-old baby became the first child to contract the disease in 25 years. The virus was found in water samples taken in Khan Yunis and Deir Al-Balah in late June.

Despite the World Health Organisation’s announcement last Thursday that Israel had consented to a series of “humanitarian truces” lasting three days each in the central, southern, and northern sections of the Strip in order to carry out a polio vaccination campaign that would benefit 640,000 children, Israel has continued its attacks.

Read: UN agency warns of ‘disastrous’ consequences in event of military operation during polio vaccination campaign in Gaza

Along with the ongoing shelling in various parts of the Strip, “these Israeli military attacks have coincided with the peak of families’ movement with their children towards the designated vaccination centres,” Euro-Med added. “Some of these attacks have even targeted locations near the vaccination centres, endangering the progress of the vaccination process that is required to stop the poliovirus from spreading among Palestinian children in the besieged enclave.”

“Deliberately initiating heavy military assaults during the vaccination campaign will undoubtedly make it more difficult for Palestinian families to get to health facilities and raise their anxiety, which might lead them to refrain entirely from going to these centres. This indicates that Israel has a clear and deliberate intention to thwart efforts to combat the virus and undermine the vaccination campaign.”

“These attacks are part of a larger plan aimed at exacerbating the man-made humanitarian crisis currently plaguing the Gaza Strip, preventing the alleviation of Palestinian suffering there, increasing the risk to the lives of Palestinian children and society at large, and intensifying the comprehensive crime of genocide that Israel is committing there,” the rights group added.