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Photos: Mass polio vaccination drive kicks off in Gaza amid Israeli strikes
Palestinian health authorities and United Nations agencies on Sunday began a vaccination drive against polio in the Gaza Strip, hoping to prevent an outbreak in the territory ravaged by nearly 11 months of Israeli bombardment.
Authorities plan to vaccinate children in central Gaza until Wednesday before moving to the more devastated northern and southern parts of the Strip, aiming to inoculate about 640,000 children. On Saturday, a few children were vaccinated before the formal start of the campaign.
“This is the first few hours of the first phase of a massive campaign, one of the most complex in the world,” said Juliette Touma, communications director of UNRWA, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency.
“Today is test time for parties to the conflict to respect these area pauses to allow the UNRWA teams and other medical workers to reach children with these very precious two drops. It’s a race against time,” Touma told the Reuters news agency.
Israel and Hamas, which have so far failed to conclude a deal to end the war, said they would cooperate to allow the campaign to succeed.
The World Health Organization said on Thursday that Israel has agreed to limited pauses in its military operations to facilitate the campaign. There were initial reports of Israeli strikes in central Gaza early on Sunday, but it was not immediately known if anyone was killed or wounded.
Hospitals in Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat confirmed that the campaign had begun on Sunday. Israel said on Saturday that the vaccination programme would continue through September 9 and last eight hours a day.
The vaccinations will be held at some 160 sites across the territory, including medical centres and schools. Children below 10 years of age will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second to be administered four weeks after the first.
Gaza recently reported its first polio case in 25 years – a 10-month-old boy, now paralysed in the leg. The WHO says the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but are not showing symptoms.
Most affected children do not experience symptoms and those who do usually recover in a week or so, the UN health agency said. There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented. When polio causes paralysis, it is usually permanent. The disease can be fatal if the paralysis affects breathing muscles.
The vaccination campaign faces a host of challenges, from ongoing war to devastated roads and hospitals shut down by the war. About 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, with hundreds of thousands crammed into squalid tent camps.
Health officials have expressed alarm about disease outbreaks as rubbish piles up and the bombing of critical infrastructure has sent putrid water flowing through the streets. Widespread hunger has left people even more vulnerable to illness.
“We escaped death with our children and fled from place to place for the sake of our children, and now we have these diseases,” said Wafaa Obaid, who brought her three children to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah for vaccination.
Israeli strikes overnight and into Thursday killed a family of six and a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip.
A strike hit the tent where Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua was staying in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, killing him, according to Basem Naim, another Hamas official.
Another strike near Gaza City killed four children and their parents, according to the emergency service of Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas last week, launching a surprise wave of strikes that killed hundreds of Palestinians. It has vowed to escalate the offensive if Hamas does not release hostages, disarm and leave the territory.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.
Search efforts remain underway for four U.S. Army soldiers who went missing while training in Lithuania, leaving behind a sunken military vehicle, a NATO spokesperson clarified Wednesday, despite earlier claims that they were deceased.
NATO said the search is “ongoing” and that the fate of the missing “is still unknown,” according to a statement posted on X.
“This is still early news so we do not know the details,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters in Warsaw. “This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones.”
Asked Wednesday evening by reporters if he had been briefed about the missing soldiers, President Donald Trump said, “No, I haven’t.”
Few details surrounding the incident were immediately provided by U.S. officials.
A U.S. official would say only that the four soldiers were involved in a training accident, The Associated Press reported. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not comment on the status of the soldiers.
The soldiers were conducting scheduled tactical training near Pabradė, a town north of the capital Vilnius, when they went missing, U.S. Army Europe and Africa public affairs in Wiesbaden, Germany, said in a statement.
The missing M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle carrying the four soldiers was later found in a body of water in a training area during a search by the U.S. Army, Lithuanian Armed Forces and other Lithuanian authorities.
FOREIGN NATIONALS FLYING DRONES OVER US MILITARY SITES RAISES ‘ESPIONAGE’ CONCERN: EXPERT
Eurocopters Tiger of the German Army take part in Lithuanian-German military exercises at a training range in Pabrade, north of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania, on May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis, File)
The soldiers, all from the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division — a unit stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia, went missing during the scheduled tactical training, according to the statement.
Recovery efforts are underway by U.S. Army and Lithuanian Armed Forces and civilian agencies.
Search efforts for the soldiers continue, and the 3rd Infantry Division is keeping the soliders’ families informed on the status of search efforts.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with our Raider Brigade Soldiers and Families during the search for our four missing Dogface Soldiers in Lithuania,” the division wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
Further updates about the search for the missing soldiers would be provided as information becomes available, the U.S. military said.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS MISSING AND MURDERED UNIT INVESTIGATING ALLEGED MILITARY BASE KILLING
The training ground in Pabradė is located less than 6 miles from the border with Belarus.
“I would like to personally thank the Lithuanian Armed Forces and first responders who quickly came to our aid in our search operations,” Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the V Corps commanding general, said in a written statement. “It’s this kind of teamwork and support that exemplifies the importance of our partnership and our humanity regardless of what flags we wear on our shoulders.”
Lithuania, a member of NATO, has often had tense relations with Russia, a key ally of Belarus, since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. Latvia and Estonia, the other Baltic countries that broke away from the Soviet Union, have had similarly chilly ties with Russia.
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Relations soured further over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has been one of the most outspoken supporters of Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Fort Stewart did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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