The Israeli military and Palestinian resistance group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said yesterday.
The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organisation’s senior official for the Palestinian territories. He said the agreement was for the pauses to take place between 6am and 3pm.
He said the campaign would start in central Gaza with a three-day pause in fighting, then move to southern Gaza, where there would be another three-day pause, followed by northern Gaza. Peeperkorn added that there was an agreement to extend the humanitarian pause in each zone to a fourth day if needed.
“We are ready to co-operate with international organisations to secure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas official Basem Naim said.
