Israeli Air Strikes Hit Gaza Strip

Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as Israel launched air strikes on the Palestinian enclave early Thursday © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP
Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as Israel launched air strikes on the Palestinian enclave early Thursday © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP
TT

Israeli Air Strikes Hit Gaza Strip

Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as Israel launched air strikes on the Palestinian enclave early Thursday © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP
Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as Israel launched air strikes on the Palestinian enclave early Thursday © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP

Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip early Thursday, which Palestinian fighters reacted to by firing rockets in the latest bout of unrest in the region.

The overnight attacks -- which Israel's army confirmed in a statement at 02:41 am (0041 GMT) -- come hours after the army intercepted a rocket fired from the Palestinian territory.

Emergency services reported no immediate casualties on either side.

According to local security sources and witnesses, the first round of strikes -- at least seven -- hit a training centre of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. The center is in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

A statement by the Israeli army said fighter jets had "struck a production site for raw chemical material production, preservation and storage along with a weapon manufacturing site" belonging to Hamas.

The strikes came "in response to the rocket launch from the Gaza Strip into Israel earlier" Wednesday.

After the strikes, AFP reporters and witnesses saw new rounds of rockets fired from Gaza, and fresh explosions could be heard from Gaza City around 3:15 am (0115 GMT).

Warning sirens sounded in Sderot, a town in southern Israel close to the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli army.



WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
TT

WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)

The World Health Organization is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said on Friday.

"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

He wrote that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.

Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Cases of polio have declined by 99% worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and efforts continue to eradicate it completely.

Israel's military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.

Besides polio, the UN reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.