Closing summary
A large-scale vaccination campaign to inoculate children against the newly emerged threat of polio in the Gaza Strip has continued into its third day, despite ongoing Israeli airstrikes. The World Health Organization said it is ahead of its targets for polio vaccinations. It vaccinated over 161,000 children under 10 in the central area in the first two days of its campaign versus a projected 150,000.
A journalist from the Agence France-Presse news agency reported troops blowing up homes in Gaza City and warplanes hitting a house to the east overnight into Tuesday. The territory’s civil defence agency said Israel carried out a deadly strike on a tent sheltering displaced people in southern Khan Younis, as well as bombarding central Gaza.
Israeli forces continued their assault on the city of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, and its camp for the seventh consecutive day. Israeli soldiers also were reported to have caused widespread destruction to the infrastructure contained within the Tulkarm refugee camp. At least 30 people have been killed in Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank since Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, described the UK’s government’s decision to suspend around 30 out of 350 export licences to Israel as “shameful”. But human rights groups have called for the suspension of all new and existing licenses to Israel, saying the new restrictions are full of loopholes.
At least 40,819 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,291 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. The toll includes 33 Palestinians killed in the previous 24 hours.
Sources within Israel’s justice ministry believe the International Criminal Court will decide in the coming days on whether to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Updated
Israeli forces cause widespread destruction to Tulkarm refugee camp - report
We mentioned in an earlier post that the Gaza health ministry has reported that Israeli forces have killed 33 Palestinians across Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Among those killed were four women in the southern city of Rafah and eight people near a hospital in Gaza City in the north, the Palestinian civil emergency service said. Others were killed in separate air strikes across the territory, it said.
Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported today that Israeli soldiers have caused widespread destruction to the infrastructure contained within the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
This report is from Wafa. The claims in it have not yet been independently verified by the Guardian:
The occupation forces sent more vehicles to the camp, imposed a tight siege and curfew, and banned citizens from moving, while firing bullets randomly, with the sounds of explosions heard inside the camp’s alleys.
The occupation’s heavy bulldozers are razing and destroying streets and infrastructure in the alleys of Al-Hamam, Al-Sawalma, Al-Rabaia, and Al-Balawneh.
The water, electricity, and communications networks were also damaged during this aggression, which led to their interruption and interference in the internet networks.
The Israeli military launched an assault across the West Bank last week. Israeli leaders say it is designed to pre-empt attacks on Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last month. The military operations have involved widespread destruction, mass detentions and targeted killings.
In total, “there are 30 martyrs and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since Wednesday,” when the Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.
Updated
