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Israeli Attacks in Gaza Kill 33 Palestinians but Pauses Allow Third Day of Polio Vaccinations

Palestinian children sit at the rubble of a mosque destroyed in an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, September 3, 2024. REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri Purchase Licensing Rights
Palestinian children sit at the rubble of a mosque destroyed in an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, September 3, 2024. REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri Purchase Licensing Rights
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Israeli Attacks in Gaza Kill 33 Palestinians but Pauses Allow Third Day of Polio Vaccinations

Palestinian children sit at the rubble of a mosque destroyed in an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, September 3, 2024. REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri Purchase Licensing Rights
Palestinian children sit at the rubble of a mosque destroyed in an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, September 3, 2024. REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri Purchase Licensing Rights

Israeli forces killed 33 Palestinians across Gaza in the past 24 hours as they battled Hamas, Palestinian officials said on Tuesday, but brief pauses in fighting allowed medics to conduct a third day of polio vaccinations for children.

Among those killed 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. Others were killed in separate air strikes across the territory, it said.

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

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

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

The campaign, which was hastened by the discovery of the first polio case in a Gazan baby last month, relies on daily eight-hour pauses in fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in specific areas of the besieged enclave.

Diplomatic efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire and release foreign and Israeli hostages held in Gaza and return many Palestinians jailed by Israel have stalled, however.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israeli troops 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 hostages.

Hamas, which wants an agreement to end the war and see Israeli forces out of all of the Gaza Strip, says such a condition, among some others, would prevent a deal. Netanyahu says war can only end when Hamas is eradicated.

- POLIO CAMPAIGN

The United Nations, in collaboration with the local health authorities, embarked on the third day of a complex campaign to vaccinate around 640,000 children in Gaza.

Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian territories, told reporters in Geneva that it had vaccinated more than 161,000 children under 10 in the central area in the first two days of its campaign, compared with a projection of around 150,000.

"Up until now things are going well," he said. "These humanitarian pauses, up until now they work. We still have 10 days to go." He said that some children in southern Gaza were thought to be outside the agreed zone for the pauses and that negotiations continued in order to reach them.

Palestinians say a key reason for the return of polio is the collapse of the health system and the destruction of most Gaza hospitals. Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, which the Islamist group denies.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel, when its fighters killed 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, more than 40,800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the enclave's health ministry said on Monday.

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Salvagers Abandon Effort to Tow Burning Oil Tanker in Red Sea Targeted by Houthis in Yemen

A satellite view shows smoke and flames rising from the Sounion oil tanker on the Red Sea, August 29, 2024. (Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters)
A satellite view shows smoke and flames rising from the Sounion oil tanker on the Red Sea, August 29, 2024. (Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters)
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Salvagers Abandon Effort to Tow Burning Oil Tanker in Red Sea Targeted by Houthis in Yemen

A satellite view shows smoke and flames rising from the Sounion oil tanker on the Red Sea, August 29, 2024. (Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters)
A satellite view shows smoke and flames rising from the Sounion oil tanker on the Red Sea, August 29, 2024. (Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters)

Salvagers abandoned an initial effort to tow away a burning oil tanker in the Red Sea targeted by Yemen's Houthi militias as it “was not safe to proceed,” a European Union naval mission said Tuesday, leaving the Sounion stranded and its 1 million barrels of oil at risk of spilling.

While a major spill has yet to occur, the incident threatens to become one of the worst yet in the Iranian-backed Houthis’ campaign that has disrupted the $1 trillion in goods that pass through the Red Sea each year over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. It also has halted some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.

“The private companies responsible for the salvage operation have concluded that the conditions were not met to conduct the towing operation and that it was not safe to proceed,” the EU’s Operation Aspides mission said, without elaborating. “Alternative solutions are now being explored by the private companies.”

The EU mission did not respond to questions from The Associated Press about the announcement. The safety issue could be the fire burning aboard the vessel. Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC taken Tuesday afternoon and analyzed by the AP showed the Sounion still ablaze.

The US State Department has warned a spill from the Sounion could be “four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster” in 1989 off Alaska.

Meanwhile, there's the threat of attacks by the Houthis, who on Monday targeted two other oil tankers traveling through the Red Sea. The Houthis have suggested they'll allow a salvage operation to take place, but critics say the rebels have used the threat of an environmental disaster previously involving another oil tanker off Yemen to extract concessions from the international community.

The Houthis initially attacked the Greek-flagged Sounion tanker on Aug. 21 with small arms fire, projectiles and a drone boat. A French destroyer operating as part of Operation Aspides rescued its crew of 25 Filipinos and Russians, as well as four private security personnel, after they abandoned the vessel and took them to nearby Djibouti.

Last week, the Houthis released footage showing they planted explosives on board the Sounion and ignited them in a propaganda video, something the militias have done before in their campaign.

The Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.

The Houthis maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

There no American vessels known to be in the Red Sea at the moment as the EU mission has taken charge after the Sounion attack. A US defense official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss information not made public, said the American military has not been asked and has no role in the cleanup or the towing of the Sounion.

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower recently served a monthslong deployment in the Red Sea, facing the most intense, continuous combat the US Navy has been seen since World War II while fighting against the Houthis.

Two US aircraft carriers, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Abraham Lincoln, along with their carrier groups, are in the Gulf of Oman to counter a threatened Iranian retaliation against Israel over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

The Houthis' attacks likely will continue until there's a ceasefire in Gaza, warned Matthew Bey, a senior analyst at the RANE Group, a risk consultancy. Even then, there's a risk that the militias will continue the attacks.

“The Houthis have learned quite a bit from what they’ve been doing over the last year — it’s been a very significant recruiting boon for them,” Bey told the AP. “I think there are a lot of incentives for them to target shipping in the future because they’ve learned that they can be very successful in that. It brings in the West, which is kind of the enemy that they want to fight to some degree as well.”