The attack on a US charity-led aid convoy headed to a Gaza hospital came mere hours after another World Food Programme convoy came under repeated Israeli fire.
An Israeli missile hit a convoy carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing several people from a local transportation company, the American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera) organisation said Friday.
Israel claimed without evidence that it opened fire after gunmen seized the convoy.
The strike Thursday hit the first car in the convoy on the Salah al-Din road in the Gaza Strip, killing several people employed by a transportation company that the aid group was using to bring supplies to the Emirates Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah, said Sandra Rasheed, Anera’s director for the Palestinian territories.
The convoy, which was coordinated by Anera and approved by Israeli authorities, included an Anera employee who was unharmed, Rasheed said in a statement.
The strike happened shortly after a UN World Food Programme vehicle in a different aid convoy came under repeated Israeli fire as it was moving toward an Israeli military checkpoint in central Gaza.
Washington has criticised Israel’s attacks against aid workers and called for an end to assaults and threatening rhetoric against the UN and humanitarian organisations.
At a UN Security Council meeting on the humanitarian situation in Gaza on Thursday, US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood highlighted the Israeli military’s repeated firing at a clearly marked vehicle of the UN food agency. The convoy had received multiple clearances from Israeli authorities.
Three-day pause in Gaza fighting agreed to allow polio jabs
Israel and Hamas have agreed to set a number of three-day pauses in fighting to allow a polio vaccination drive to take place across the Gaza Strip.
The vaccine drive will focus on children after a baby in Gaza became paralysed by the type 2 poliovirus last week, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It’s the first such case in Gaza in 25 years.
The first round of vaccinations will begin in central Gaza on Sunday, with pauses scheduled between 6 am and 3 pm local time (5 am and 2pm CET).
The campaign will then move to southern Gaza for another three-day pause before heading to the northern part of the strip.
Rik Peeperkorn, a senior official of the WHO, said the pauses could be extended to a fourth day if necessary.
He added that a second round of vaccinations would need to take place four weeks after the first.
At a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday, the WHO Emergencies Director Mike Ryan said that “at least 90% of coverage is needed during each round of the campaign in order to stop the outbreak and prevent international spread of polio.”
It’s reported that around 1.26 million doses of the polio vaccine have already arrived in Gaza, with a further 400,000 expected to follow.
The vaccinations will be carried out by UN staff in Gaza, alongside local health workers, but the Israeli military’s humanitarian unit, COGAT, said the drive would be conducted in coordination with the IDF.
Israel’s West Bank campaign continues
Israel’s large-scale military operation in the West Bank has reached its third day, with the Israeli military claiming to have struck a “terrorist cell” in the city of Jenin.
Israeli troops also say a local commander of the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad movement was during a “significant exchange of fire” in the city of Tulkarem. Four other Palestinian fighters were also killed.
Israel says the raids across the northern West Bank — which have killed at least 19 people, nearly all militants, since late Tuesday — are aimed at preventing attacks on Israelis.
The Palestinians see them as a widening of the war in Gaza and an effort to perpetuate Israel’s decades-long military rule over the territory.
