Jerusalem, Aug 31 (EFE).- At least 40 Gazans lost their lives on Saturday in Israeli bombings, concentrated in the central camp of Nuseirat and in the southern areas of Jan Yunis and Rafah, while the civilian population lives in overcrowded conditions, mired in scarcity and the spread of disease.
The death toll since October 7 has reached nearly 40,700 and more than 94,000 have been injured, according to the Ministry of Health’s hospital count. Another 10,000 bodies are estimated to remain under tons of rubble.
Only in Nuseirat did they die today 20 Gazans, Most of them were members of four different families, in artillery attacks on their homes in which children were also killed, local authorities reported today.
In southern Khan Yunis, from where the Israeli army withdrew yesterday After 22 days of offensive, Red Crescent emergency teams recovered at least eight bodies, according to a video posted on social media.
Also in Khan Yunis, five civilians were killed and 15 other members of the Abu Bakr family were injured in the bombing of a house in Al Jabour, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also reported a drone attack, Rafah, which killed at least two Palestinians.
According to a recent assessment by the English NGO International Rescue Committee (IRC), 41% of Gazan families care for children who are not their own since the start of the war in Gaza, and doctors are treating children in hospitals that have no surviving adults left.
Polio vaccination begins
This Saturday, for the moment in a limited way, the distribution of polio vaccines began in the south of the Gaza Strip, one day before the date announced by the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to health authorities and local media, a small number of babies and children at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis have been vaccinated and will need to take a second dose in three weeks.
The campaign aims to immunize more than 640,000 children under the age of 10 against polio, after the first case of the disease was detected in the Strip – with dire sanitary conditions and a displaced population crowded into tents – for the first time in more than 25 years.
The campaign will last about three days and is preceded by an agreement, according to the World Health Organization and also accepted by Israel, to hold daily pauses in the fighting of eight hours, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.
86% of Gaza is evacuated
According to data from the UN, Around 86% of the Strip remains affected by more than 40 evacuation orders, while hundreds of thousands of displaced families are forced to live in the so-called “humanitarian zone”, a strip of just 47 square kilometers without essential infrastructure and services.
“The situation in Gaza is beyond desperate… Civilians are hungry. They are thirsty. They are sick. They are homeless. They have been pushed beyond the limits of endurance, beyond what any human being should be able to endure,” UN Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya said in a report on Thursday.
Overcrowding in Al Mawasi (in Khan Younis), coupled with a lack of clean water, sanitation and basic hygiene products such as soap, is affecting children and spreading the spread of skin diseases.
As of June 30, the WHO had recorded 103,385 cases of scabies and lice, 65,368 cases of skin rashes and 11,214 cases of chickenpox in the Strip.
“Every day we see between 300 and 400 people at the medical clinic, of which 200 cases are related to skin diseases,” explained yesterday in a statement the pediatrician of the Palestinian Association for Agricultural Development (PARC), Dr. Youssef Salaf al Farra, stressing that children are the most affected.
For three months, the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has been trying to import 4,000 hygiene kits for the humanitarian zone, including items such as soap, toothbrushes, shampoo and laundry detergent, but they say the Israeli authorities are not allowing them to do so.
