Israel, Hamas agree to zoned three-day pauses for Gaza polio vaccinations, WHO says
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A boy walking through a puddle of waste water, past mounds of trash and rubble, in the northern Gaza Strip, on Aug 14.
PHOTO: AFP
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UNITED NATIONS, United States - The Israeli military and Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said on Aug 29.
The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sept 1, said Mr Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organisation’s senior official for the Palestinian territories.
He said the agreement was for the pauses to take place between 6am and 3pm.
He 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.
Mr Peeperkorn added that there was an agreement to extend the humanitarian pause in each zone to a fourth day if needed.
The WHO confirmed on Aug 23 that at least one baby has been paralysed
The UN Security Council will meet later on Aug 29 on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“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) said on Aug 28 that 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 centers where the vaccinations will be administered.”
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct 7
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,000 Palestinians,
