Israeli attacks in Gaza kill 35 people as polio vaccinations continue

Israeli forces have killed at least 35 people across Gaza, according to Palestinian officials, as brief and partial pauses in fighting in central Gaza have allowed medics to conduct a further day of polio vaccinations for children.

Among those killed over the latest 24-hour reporting period were four women in the southern city of Rafah and eight people near a hospital in Gaza City in the north, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said on Tuesday.

Later, an Israeli airstrike killed nine Palestinians inside a house near Omar Al-Mokhtar Street in the middle of Gaza City, medics said. Another strike hit near a college in Sheikh Radwan, a northern suburb of the city. Others were killed in air strikes across the territory, medics said.

The Israeli military said it killed eight Palestinian gunmen, including a senior Hamas commander who took part in the October 7 attacks in Israel, at a command centre near the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.

A statement said Ahmed Fozi Nazer Muhammad Wadia had taken command of a “massacre of civilians” in Israel’s Netiv HaAsara community near the Gaza border. There was no immediate response from Hamas.

The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad said they were battling Israeli forces in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City and also in Rafah and Khan Younis in the south.

Nevertheless, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was ahead of its targets for polio vaccinations in Gaza on Tuesday, the third day of a mass campaign, and had inoculated about a quarter of Gaza’s children under 10.

After the first confirmed polio case in the territory in 25 years, a massive vaccination effort began on Sunday. The campaign relies on daily eight-hour pauses in fighting between Israel and Hamas fighters in specific areas of the besieged enclave.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the suspensions in fighting to allow children to be vaccinated as a “rare ray of hope and humanity in the cascade of horror”, his spokesperson said.