INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Israeli forces killed at least 35 Palestinians across Gaza on Tuesday as they battled Hamas-led militants, Palestinian officials said, but
brief pauses in fighting allowed medics to conduct a third day of polio vaccinations for children, Reuters reported.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.Later on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed nine Palestinians inside a house near Omar Al-Mokhtar Street in the middle of Gaza City,
medics said.Another strike hit near a college in Sheikh Radwan, a northern suburb of the city
The Israeli military said the strike targeted Hamas militants operating from a command center embedded inside the former Nama College.Others
were killed in separate air strikes across the territory, medics 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.A statement said Ahmed Fozi Nazer Muhammad Wadia had
taken command of a &massacre of civilians carried out by Hamas terrorists& in Israel&s Netiv HaAsara community near the Gaza border
There was no response from Hamas.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, read the report.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.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 against polio, Reuters reported.United Nations
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described pauses in fighting to allow the vaccinations as a &rare ray of hope and humanity in the cascade
of horror,& his spokesperson said on Tuesday.&If the parties can act to protect children from a deadly virus…surely they can and must act
to protect children and all innocents from the horrors of war,& U.N
spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, told reporters in Geneva
that it had vaccinated more than 161,000 children under the age of 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, read the report.The war in Gaza was
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, according to the enclave&s health ministry.The post Israeli attacks in Gaza
kill 35 Palestinians but pauses allow third day of polio vaccinations first appeared on Ariana News.
