Israeli attacks in Gaza kill more than a dozen people as polio vaccinations continue

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people on Saturday night, hospital and local authorities said, as medical workers completed the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign aimed at preventing a large-scale outbreak.

The vaccination campaign was launched after health officials confirmed the first case of polio in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, a 10-month-old boy whose leg is now paralyzed. The nine-day campaign by the UN health agency and its partners aims to vaccinate 640,000 children – an ambitious undertaking during a war that has devastated Gaza's health system and much of its infrastructure. The third phase of vaccination will take place in the north.

Meanwhile, Israel continued its military offensive. In the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, Al-Awda Hospital said it had received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate airstrikes. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least ten, while an attack on a house in western Nuseirat killed five people.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the largest hospital in central Gaza, also said a woman and her two children were killed in an attack on a house in the nearby Bureij refugee camp.

In northern Gaza, at least four people were killed and about two dozen others wounded in an airstrike on a school in the town of Jabaliya that was being converted into a shelter for displaced people, according to the Gaza Strip's Civil Defense Authority, which is under the Hamas government. The Israeli military said it hit a Hamas command post in a former school compound.

The war began when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding over 100 hostages. Israeli authorities believe about a third of the hostages are dead.

According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 40,000 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli retaliatory offensive, although the count does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. The ministry says more than 94,000 people were injured.

Violence has also escalated in the occupied West Bank. Dozens of people were killed in a military operation in Jenin that lasted several days. “They (the Israeli forces) besieged the area and brought bulldozers. As you can see, they destroyed the entire area,” said a local resident, Mahmoud Al Razi.

On Friday, a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were reportedly shot dead in separate incidents in the West Bank.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who also holds Turkish citizenship, died from a gunshot wound to the head, two Palestinian doctors said. She had been protesting against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot in a moment of calm after earlier clashes.

The White House said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was investigating reports that soldiers killed a foreign national while shooting at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area.

Her family said in a statement that “given the circumstances of Aysenur's murder, an Israeli investigation is not appropriate” and called on President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation. They called the young university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and a champion of human dignity.

Separately, Palestinian health officials said 13-year-old Bana Laboom was killed by Israeli fire in the village of Qaryout.

The Israeli military said an initial investigation showed that security forces were deployed to break up a riot between Palestinian and Israeli civilians, which included mutual stone-throwing. Security forces fired shots into the air, it said.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in 1967. According to Palestinian health officials, more than 690 Palestinians have died in Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October.

Israel is under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow strip along the Gaza-Egypt border through which Israel claims Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny this.

Hamas accuses Israel of dragging out the negotiations by making new demands. Hamas has offered to release all hostages if the war ends, Israeli forces are completely withdrawn and a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-ranking militants, are released – broadly the terms Biden demanded in a draft agreement presented in July.

Almost daily clashes between Israeli forces and the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah continue along the border with Lebanon.

An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese civil defense team fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. The fire was sparked by a previous Israeli attack, the statement said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the attack.

The Israeli military said about 45 rockets were fired in several salvos at northern Israel, many of them targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no casualties. The military later said its jets hit Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in the Qabrikha area of ​​southern Lebanon.

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Magdy reported from Cairo and Jeffery from Ramallah in the West Bank. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.

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