Amid bombing, forced evacuation, WHO postpones polio campaign in Gaza

At least five Palestinians, including a doctor and municipality employees, were killed in Israeli bombing across the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said. Mohammed Ghanem, a doctor at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, was killed by an Israeli drone attack, according to the sources as reported by Xinhua news agency on Wednesday.

The Gaza Municipality said in a press statement that two of its workers operating water wells were targeted and killed by the Israeli army when they were performing duties east of the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City. Condemning the Israeli attack and urging an immediate investigation by the international community into the incident, the statement said the targeted location is one of the wells coordinated with the Israeli side and supplied with fuel periodically and that the municipality might be unable to provide basic services as a result of the attack.

In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a brief statement that two Palestinians were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli targeting of a vehicle south of Deir al-Balah city in central Gaza. According to eyewitnesses, the vehicle belongs to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the dead and injured were transferred to the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Israeli aircraft and artillery also launched a series of raids targeting residential homes in northern, central, and southern Gaza, killing and wounding many Palestinians, Palestinian sources said.

On Wednesday, the IDF said in a statement that it had stepped up attacks in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, and claimed to have killed numerous militants and located weapons. Israeli security forces have also arrested more than 150 militants in Jabalia and taken them to Israel while allowing civilians "to evacuate safely through organised routes for their protection", the IDF added.

During operations in central Gaza, Israeli troops identified and targeted several armed militants, directing an IDF aircraft to kill them, the IDF said, adding that following the strike, secondary explosions indicated the presence of significant quantities of weapons.

According to a Middle East Eye report citing eyewitnesses, however, "Israeli troops are going school to school in Jabalia and nearby areas to forcibly remove unarmed, starved and besieged Palestinian civilians from their homes as the military campaign to ethnically cleanse north Gaza nears its third week."

The MEE report also states that "large Israeli ground forces" are using the cover of heavy air strikes and artillery shelling to "directly attack homes and buildings used as shelters by displaced families, forcing everyone out at gunpoint", and then burning or razing the buildings, including UN schools and houses, to prevent the inhabitants from coming back. 

"Troops then separate men from women, before taking them to humiliating field interrogations and later abducting many of them to unknown locations," MEE reported. 

Several social media users have referred to the evacuation of Jabalia residents as a 'death march' reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps and the Jewish Holocaust.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in an X post that the polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza had been postponed owing to the escalating violence, intense bombardment, mass displacement orders, and lack of assured humanitarian pauses.

Significantly, the IDF has been putting out routine X posts showing how smoothly the vaccination programme has been running.

Israel has launched a large-scale offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against a Hamas attack on the southern Israeli border on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 people were reportedly killed and about 250 taken hostage. The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza has risen to 42,792, Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, 10 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon, as per international media reports. Israeli warplanes launched an airstrike at dawn, destroying a husayniyya (a building designed for spiritual and religious gatherings of Shia Muslims) in Maifadoun village in Nabatieh district and killing two people, and later a series of airstrikes on Wednesday morning targeting Sarbin town in Bint Jbeil district, killing five, the National News Agency (NNA) reported. Besides, three people were killed by an Israeli raid on Maarakeh village in Tyre district, it reported.

Meanwhile, Lebanon-based Islamist militant outfit Hezbollah said it targeted several Israeli sites, including gatherings of Israeli soldiers in the villages of Rab El Thalathine and Adaisseh in southern Lebanon, Xinhua news agency reported.

On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli police said the Israeli defence system intercepted a rocket launched from Lebanon towards capital Tel Aviv in central Israel, and a projectile launched simultaneously from Lebanon into northern Israel. Air defence sirens were activated in 10 cities, including Tel Aviv, additional communities in the metropolis, and Camp Gillot, where the IDF's Unit 8200, an elite cyber intelligence unit, is located.

The police reported damage to a car from interception debris in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. Later on Wednesday, a barrage of 25 more projectiles was fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, with some intercepted and no casualties reported, according to the IDF. The IDF also reported finding a drone on Wednesday in an open area near the northern Israeli city of Yokneam Illit, likely after the Israeli Air Force shot down the drone having infiltrated from Lebanon on Tuesday evening.

Earlier on Wednesday, the IDF said it intercepted three drones launched from the east, two of which were intercepted over the Red Sea near the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat and the third shot down in Syrian airspace.

Since 23 September, the Israeli army has been launching intensive airstrikes on Lebanon in an escalation with Hezbollah. Israel has been intensifying raids and shelling in southern and eastern regions of Lebanon, as well as Mount Lebanon and the southern suburbs of capital Beirut. In addition, Israel announced the launch of a ground operation near the border with southern Lebanon earlier this month.

With agency inputs