By Anadolu staff
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – United Nations agencies have postponed a polio vaccination campaign for Palestinian children in the northern Gaza Strip amid a deadly Israeli onslaught and siege on the area.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Gaza’s Health Ministry and UN partners “were compelled to the polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza” due to the escalating violence, intense bombardment, mass displacement orders, and lack of assured humanitarian pauses.
“It is crucial that the campaign is urgently facilitated in the north through the implementation of the humanitarian pauses, ensuring access for wherever eligible children are located,” it added in a statement.
The Palestinian Health Ministry, for its part, accused Israel of putting obstacles before the vaccination campaign in northern Gaza.
“These obstacles hinder the implementation of vaccination on time, and deprives children in northern Gaza from their right to receive vaccination,” it added.
The second phase of the polio vaccination campaign began in central Gaza on Oct. 14.
Phase one of the campaign, which concluded on Sept. 12, included over half a million Palestinian children.
The Israeli army stepped up its massive assault in northern Gaza amid a suffocating siege that has left tens of thousands of people without food and water.
The onslaught, which began on Oct. 5, was the latest episode in Israel’s brutal onslaught that has killed nearly 42,800 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 100,400 others since last year following a Hamas attack.
The Israeli onslaught on Gaza has displaced almost the territory’s entire population amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
*Writing by Ahmed Asmar