RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Gaza has recorded its first polio case in 25 years, the Palestinian health ministry said on Friday, after UN chief Antonio Guterres called for pauses in the Israel-Hamas war to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children.
Tests in Jordan confirmed the disease in an unvaccinated 10-month-old from the central Gaza Strip, the health ministry in Ramallah said.
According to the United Nations, Gaza, now in its 11th month of war, has not registered a polio case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory’s wastewater in June.
“Doctors suspected the presence of symptoms consistent with polio,” the health ministry said. “After conducting the necessary tests in the Jordanian capital, Amman, the infection was confirmed.”
The case emerged shortly after Guterres called for two seven-day breaks in the Gaza war to vaccinate more than 640,000 children.
Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious. It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.
The UN health and children’s agencies said they had made detailed plans to reach children across the besieged Palestinian territory and could start this month.
But that would require pauses in the 10-month old war between Israel and Hamas, they said.
“Preventing and containing the spread of polio will take a massive, coordinated and urgent effort,” Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
“I am appealing to all parties to provide concrete assurances right away guaranteeing humanitarian pauses for the campaign.”
The World Health Organization and UN children’s fund UNICEF said they were planning two seven-day vaccination drives across the Gaza Strip, starting in late August, against type 2 poliovirus (cVDPV2).
Last month, it was announced that type 2 poliovirus had been detected in samples collected in Gaza on June 23.
“These pauses in fighting would allow children and families to safely reach health facilities and community outreach workers to get to children who cannot access health facilities for polio vaccination,” the agencies said in a statement said.
After 25 years without polio, its re-emergence in the Gaza Strip would threaten neighboring countries, it added.
“A ceasefire is the only way to ensure public health security in the Gaza Strip and the region.”
During each round of the campaign, the health ministry in Gaza, alongside UN agencies, would provide “two drops of novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) to more than 640,000 children under 10 years of age.”
More than 1.6 million doses of nOPV2 were expected to transit through Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport “by the end of August,” the statement added.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
On Thursday, the toll from Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza passed 40,000, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant casualties.
Gaza records first polio case in 25 years as UN urges vaccinations
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Gaza records first polio case in 25 years as UN urges vaccinations
- Tests in Jordan confirmed the disease in an unvaccinated 10-month-old from the central Gaza Strip, the health ministry in Ramallah said
- “Doctors suspected the presence of symptoms consistent with polio,” the health ministry said
Jordanians ‘boiling with anger’ at Gaza spurring Israel border attacks
- In 1994 Jordan became the second Arab country, after Egypt, to recognize Israel and establish diplomatic ties
- Many Jordanians saw the perpetrators of both attacks against Israel as martyred heroes
“Jordanians are boiling with anger, this is undeniable,” said Oraib Rantawi, head of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies.
The attackers, who were killed in a firefight south of the Dead Sea last week that lightly wounded two Israeli soldiers, were members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, although the Islamist group said they acted independently.
It came just weeks after another attack by a Jordanian gunman at a border crossing with the occupied West Bank which killed three Israeli guards.
The two assailants in the most recent attack, Hussam Abu Ghazaleh and Amer Qawoos, had “always participated in events in solidarity with Gaza and in support of the resistance,” a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman recently said.
While there have been protests, Rantawi said, many Jordanians want concrete action against Israel, such as suspending trade or cutting diplomatic ties.
“Some young people, particularly those from Islamist, nationalist and leftist movements, feel that protests alone are not enough,” he said.
Jordan, where about half of the population is of Palestinian origin, has yet to officially condemn the attack.
But, Prime Minister Jafar Hassan said after the latest attack: “We will not be a place for strife or accept the risking of the future of this country, and we will not allow any party to replicate their models of chaos and destruction in our homeland.”
In 1994 Jordan became the second Arab country, after Egypt, to recognize Israel and establish diplomatic ties. Their shared border has remained largely calm since then.
Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has been fighting Israeli forces in Gaza since its October 7 attack last year sparked the war in the territory, called the latest attack “a significant development in the ongoing battle.”
It came just hours after Israel confirmed its forces in Gaza had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, accused by Israel of masterminding the October 7 attack.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 42,924 people, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the United Nations considers reliable.
The cross-border attacks “highlight mounting pressure on ordinary Jordanians as a result of Israel’s escalating aggression with the United States’ continuous support,” said political analyst Labib Kamhawi.
He said “the anger is evident both at the public and official levels, with the Jordanian government frustrated by Israel’s aggressive behavior.”
Amman has been “signalling that Jordan cannot ignore rising public outrage,” he added.
Many Jordanians saw the perpetrators of both attacks against Israel as martyred heroes, some even celebrating with sweets and fireworks in Amman.
Maher Diab Hussein Al-Jazi, who carried out the September attack before killing himself, was also hailed as a hero.
His father told local media that he was “honored to have raised a brave son who carried out an act of sacrifice.”
Faced with widespread anger from its people, Jordan has been striving to bring a diplomatic end to the war in Gaza.
But, Kamhawi said, “some Jordanians now see that attacks remain the only way of expressing solidarity with Palestinians.”
Attack on Iran police convoy kills 10 officers
- Authorities identified no immediate suspects for the attack, nor did any group claim responsibility
TEHRAN: An attack in Iran’s restive southeast killed 10 members of the country’s national police force Saturday, local media reported.
The semiofficial ISNA, Mehr and Tasnim news agencies all reported the fatalities in the attack in Gohar Kuh, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) southeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
An earlier report on the state-run IRNA news agency described the convoy as being attacked by “miscreants,” without elaborating.
Authorities identified no immediate suspects for the attack, nor did any group claim responsibility. The assault came after Israel launched a major attack across Iran early Saturday morning.
HalVash, an advocacy group for the Baluch people of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, posted photos and video of what appeared to be a disabled truck painted with the green stripe used by Iranian police vehicles. One graphic photo shared by the group showed what appeared to be the corpses of two police officers in the front seat of the truck.
HalVash said the attack appeared to target two security force vehicles and all those riding in them were killed. The truck appeared to have only damage from bullets, rather than any explosive being used.
IRNA also reported via the Telegram messaging app that Eskandar Momeni, the country’s interior minister, ordered an investigation into the incident that it described as causing the “martyrdom of a number of police.”
The Baluch regions across the three nations have faced a low-level insurgency by Baluch nationalists for more than two decades. Verifying information remains difficult in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan, which for decades has been home to violence involving heroin traffickers.
Meanwhile, the Taliban said they are investigating reports that Afghan migrants had been killed by Iranian security forces in the region earlier in October, an incident that threatened to further strain relations between the nations.
Activists say 50 killed in Sudan paramilitary attack
- In Al-Sariha alone, the attack killed 50 and wounded more than 200
GEDAREF, Sudan: At least 50 people have been killed in a single attack by Sudanese paramilitaries who have besieged and raided villages in Al-Jazira state, activists said.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been at war with Sudan’s regular army since April 2023 but have in recent days intensified their violence against civilians in Al-Jazira, south of the capital Khartoum, after their commander in the state defected to the army.
“The villages of Al-Sariha and Azraq have been under attack” since Friday morning, the resistance committee in Hasaheisa, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid in Sudan, said in a statement to AFP late on Friday.
In Al-Sariha alone, the attack killed 50 and wounded more than 200, the resistance committee added, reporting a total “inability to evacuate the wounded from the village due to the shelling and snipers” from the RSF.
With a near-total communications blackout, tolls are impossible to verify and often hard to gather.
The resistance committee said that the nearby village of Azraq had been placed under a “total siege, suffering the same violations as Al-Sariha,” although it was not possible to provide a death toll.
On Friday, the Sudanese doctors’ union called on the United Nations to press for safe humanitarian corridors into villages that “are facing genocide at the hands of the Rapid Support militia.”
The doctors’ union added that rescue operations had become impossible and that “the army is incapable of protecting civilians.”
According to medical sources in several villages, nearly all health facilities capable of receiving emergency cases have been forced shut.
The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, with some estimates of 150,000 dead.
It has also caused what the UN calls the world’s largest displacement crisis, with more than seven million uprooted.
In June, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the UN, said Sudan is the planet’s “largest humanitarian crisis.”
Famine was declared in July in the Zamzam camp for displaced people near the town of El-Fasher, in Sudan’s western Darfur region bordering Chad.
Intense violence
Last Sunday the army announced that the RSF’s Al-Jazira commander Abu Aqla Kaykal had abandoned the paramilitaries, bringing “a large number of his forces” with him, in what it said was the first high-profile defection to its side.
Activists reported at least 20 people killed in subsequent paramilitary attacks in eastern Al-Jazira. They also said an air strike by the Sudanese Armed forces on a mosque in the state capital, Wad Madani, killed 31 people.
On Thursday, neighboring Chad denied helping to arm the paramilitaries after the governor of Sudan’s Darfur region, Minni Minnawi, accused them of doing so.
“Chad has no interest in amplifying the war in Sudan,” said Chadian Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah, pointing out that Chad was “one of the rare countries upon which this war has had major repercussions.”
Sudanese authorities have previously charged that Chad was facilitating the delivery of weapons from the United Arab Emirates to Sudan, which both Chad and the UAE have denied.
The International Monetary Fund’s director for Africa, Catherine Pattillo, told AFP this week that the war in Sudan was likely to cause heavy economic damage to its already struggling neighbors.
“And then to be confronted with the refugees, the security issues, the trade issues, is very challenging for their growth,” she said.
Tehran residents fear escalation after Israeli attacks
- Iranian officials and media have played down the attack, but on the streets of Tehran many were concerned
TEHRAN: Residents of Tehran awoke and went about their business as planned on Saturday after their sleep was troubled by Israeli strikes that triggered blasts that echoed across the city.
The night skies had been criss-crossed by light trails from air defense weapons, but by mid-morning the capital had resumed its usual rhythm and buses wove through the streets, taking troubled Iranians to work.
Iranian officials and media have played down the attack, but on the streets of Tehran many were concerned that it had marked a new escalation and a step toward all-out war.
Hooman, a 42-year-old factory employee, was on a factory night shift when he heard the blasts.
“It was an echoing sound ... terrible and horrifying,” he told AFP. “Now that there is war in the Middle East, we are afraid that we will be dragged into it.”
Saturday’s Israeli attack came in response to Iran’s missile strike on October 1, itself a retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander.
The latest tit-for-tat moves take place against a backdrop of the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, and which has expanded to include Lebanon’s Hezbollah in recent weeks.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had conducted “precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” in response to what it said were “months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran.”
It warned Tehran against responding.
Iran confirmed Israel targeted military sites in Tehran province as well as other areas, saying the blasts heard were the “activation of the air defense system” intercepting the Israeli attack.
At least two Iranian soldiers died in the strikes.
Fears of escalation
Some in Tehran voiced fears over an escalation of the conflict.
“If they attack, it will be us who will be crushed,” said Moharam, a 51-year-old day laborer.
Others, however, said they were entirely unaware that an attack had even happened.
Iranian media has downplayed the attack, which also targeted areas in the border provinces of Khuzestan and Ilam, and reported it caused “limited damage” thanks to Iran’s air defense forces.
State media carried footage showing traffic flowing normally in several cities as people went about their daily business.
Iranian officials emphasized that all school activities and sport events were to be held as scheduled.
Flights over Iran were briefly suspended for a few hours following the attack, but later resumed as scheduled.
Sepideh, a 30-year-old insurance manager, said she woke up Saturday and hurried to work like usual despite her worries.
“War is frightening ... but I don’t think a terrible war will happen in Iran,” she said.
Hezbollah fires rockets at Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon
- Hezbollah fighters launch a ‘salvo of rockets’ at Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of the village of Aita Al-Shaab
BEIRUT: Hezbollah said it fired a barrage of rockets on Saturday at Israeli forces near a village in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli army has carried out ground incursions for weeks.
The Iran-backed group said in a statement that its fighters had launched a “salvo of rockets” at Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of the village of Aita Al-Shaab, the scene of regular clashes Hezbollah reported with Israeli forces over the past two weeks.
