GAZA – Israeli forces killed 35 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in clashes with militants from the Palestinian militant group, Palestinian officials said Tuesday, but a brief lull in fighting allowed medics to press ahead with a polio vaccination campaign for a third day.
The Palestinian Civil Defense said four women were among the dead in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah and eight near a hospital in Gaza City in the north.
Medical sources said an Israeli air strike later on Tuesday killed nine Palestinians inside a house near Omar al-Mukhtar Street in central Gaza City.
Another strike hit a site near a scientific institute in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City. The Israeli military said the strike targeted militants from the factions movement operating from a command center inside the former Namaa College.
Others were killed in separate air strikes in different parts of the region, medics said.
The Israeli military said it killed eight Palestinian militants, including a senior commander in the factions movement who took part in the October 7 attacks in Israel, at a command center near the Arab Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.
However, the World Health Organization in Gaza said on Tuesday that it had exceeded its targets for the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza three days after the campaign began, explaining that about a quarter of children under the age of 10 had received the vaccine.
The campaign, which accelerated after the first case of polio was discovered in Gaza last month, relies on a daily eight-hour lull in fighting between Israel and Hamas in specific areas of the blockaded territory.
Diplomatic efforts to reach agreement on a permanent ceasefire, the release of foreign and Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and the return of many Palestinians imprisoned by Israel have stalled.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israeli forces would remain in the Philadelphi Corridor on the southern edge of Gaza, one of the main sticking points in reaching a deal to end the fighting and return the hostages.
The factions that want an agreement to end the war and withdraw Israeli forces from all of the Gaza Strip say such a condition, among other things, would prevent an agreement from being reached.
Netanyahu says the war can only be ended by eliminating the movement of the factions.
Reuters
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2024-09-04 18:19:41