Army recovers six killed hostages – vaccination starts in Gaza

The discovery of the hostages caused an outcry in Israel. Protests against the Netanyahu government intensified. Meanwhile, a huge vaccination campaign began in the Gaza Strip.

Overshadowed by the discovery of six dead hostages in the south of the Gaza Strip, a major vaccination campaign against the polio virus has been launched in the Palestinian territory. The discovery of the bodies intensified criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli trade union umbrella organization Histadrut called for a one-day protest strike on Monday, which is also expected to affect Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv.

According to an army spokesman, the initial assessment was that the hostages were killed by Hamas shortly before the army reached them. Another army spokesman did not initially give details about the circumstances of their deaths, but said they were killed by Hamas terrorists. Hamas, on the other hand, blamed Israeli bombing for the deaths of the hostages.

Violence also continued in the occupied West Bank: three police officers, two men and one woman, were killed in a suspected Palestinian attack near Hebron.

After the first case of polio in 25 years was recently reported in the disputed coastal strip, around 640,000 children are to be immunized against the highly contagious polio virus in the coming days, according to the WHO. Two doses of the vaccine are usually administered four weeks apart.

The mass vaccination will be carried out by local health authorities, the UN Children’s Fund Unicef ​​and the UN Relief and Works Agency UNRWA, a WHO spokeswoman said. It started on Sunday in the central Gaza Strip.

Halima Baraka, a 39-year-old mother of four, arrived at one of the vaccination centers in Deir al-Balah in the morning. “I came here to protect my children from this disease,” she said, pointing to the cramped living conditions of internally displaced people in tent camps. “The situation is miserable, we have no cleaning supplies, no healthy food for our children and there is garbage everywhere.” Diseases can easily spread among the children.

Sally Saidam from the Nuseirat refugee district also came to have four of her six children vaccinated. “We are fighting for our survival, not only because of the constant Israeli bombardments, but also because of disease, hunger and poverty.” Her message to the international community: “Enough of the death and destruction, you must help us stop this war.”

During the vaccination campaign, which will last a good week and is to be expanded to other parts of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army wanted to observe temporary and localized breaks in fighting. According to his office, Netanyahu stressed that the planned breaks in fighting were not intended to be a ceasefire in the classic sense.

Shortly before the start of the vaccination campaign, the Israeli army announced the discovery of six dead hostages. Netanyahu accused Hamas of systematically torpedoing efforts to reach a ceasefire. “Those who murder hostages do not want a deal,” he said in a video message. Hamas has rejected several US proposals, while Israel has agreed to them. Critics in Israel, on the other hand, accuse Netanyahu of undermining the efforts to reach a ceasefire for domestic political and personal reasons.

The dead hostages are four men – Hersh Goldberg-Polin (23), Alexander Lobanov (32), Almog Sarusi (27) and Ori Danino (25) – and two women – Carmel Gat (40) and Eden Jeruschalmi (24). According to the forum of relatives of the abducted, five of them were kidnapped on October 7 from the Nova music festival in the Negev desert near the Gaza Strip.

The army said the six bodies were found in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area in the south of the embattled Gaza Strip and were brought to Israel. “Our initial assessment is that they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” said Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari. A Hamas spokesman, however, said the hostages were killed in Israeli bombardment.