The U.S. Secretary of State said Thursday that the United States will continue to press Israel to do more to spare humanitarian sites in the Gaza Strip, a day after an Israeli airstrike on a U.N. school complex, sheltering displaced Palestinians, killed 14 people there, including six U.N. staffers.
The deaths at the U.N. school on Wednesday came amid a spate of Israeli airstrikes across Gaza that killed at least 34 Palestinians, according to local officials. Among those killed were 19 women and children, they said.
When asked on Thursday at a news conference in the Polish capital about Israel’s bombing of the school complex in central Gaza the day before, Blinken told reporters that “we need to see humanitarian sites protected.”
“That’s something we continue to raise with Israel,” he said.
Wednesday’s strike on the U.N.-supported al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza, killed at least 14 people, including two children and a woman, hospital officials said. Among those killed were six staffers from the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, known as UNRWA, the main U.N. relief agency in Gaza.
UNRWA described the strike as the deadliest single incident for its staff members. Among those killed at the school, it said, were the manager of the shelter and others working to help the thousands of displaced people taking refuge there, including teachers.
The head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said at least 220 UNRWA staffers have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s military offensive began in response to Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas militants planning attacks from inside the school.
Blinken blamed Hamas for continuing to hide its fighters among civilians and said the bombing “underscores the urgency” of reaching a cease-fire in the embattled territory.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war. They abducted another 250 and are still holding around 100. Around a third of them are believed to be dead.
The Health Ministry says more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count. The war has caused vast destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.
Medical teams in Gaza wrap up their final day of a polio vaccination campaign
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The World Health Organization says medical teams in Gaza are wrapping up the final day of an emergency polio vaccination campaign following the discovery of the territory’s first-known case of the illness in more than 25 years.
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the U.N. health agency’s representative, told reporters in a news conference from Gaza that the health workers had reached more than an estimated 552,000 children under the age of 5. They used a new oral polio vaccine targeting the specific type of polio seen in Gaza, which is a mutated strain that originated in an older oral vaccine.
Peeperkorn said WHO and its partners have yet to do a final analysis of how many children were actually covered, but added that it was more than expected. On Wednesday, Palestinian health officials said more than half a million Gaza children have been vaccinated.
“We are quite confident that we reached an enormous [number] of children in this short time,” Peeperkorn said, referring to the four-day vaccination campaign. He said authorities were aiming to cover more than 90% of children in this immunization round and in the second one, to be held next month.
