A 10-month-old Palestinian baby suddenly stopped crawling. Polio had struck Gaza

A 10-month-old Palestinian baby suddenly stopped crawling. Polio had struck Gaza
Displaced infant Abdel-Rahman Abuel-Jedian, 11-month-old, who suffers from polio, is carried by his mother, center, at a makeshift tent camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 28 August 2024
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A 10-month-old Palestinian baby suddenly stopped crawling. Polio had struck Gaza

A 10-month-old Palestinian baby suddenly stopped crawling. Polio had struck Gaza
  • Health care workers in Gaza have been warning of the potential for a polio outbreak for months, as the humanitarian crisis unleashed by Israel’s offensive on the strip only grows

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Born into the devastating Israel-Hamas war, 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian started crawling early. Then one day, he froze — his left leg appeared to be paralyzed.
The baby boy is the first confirmed case of polio inside Gaza in 25 years, according to the World Health Organization.
Abdel-Rahman was an energetic baby, said the child’s mother, Nevine Abu El-Jedian, fighting back tears. “Suddenly, that was reversed. Suddenly, he stopped crawling, stopped moving, stopped standing up, and stopped sitting.”
Health care workers in Gaza have been warning of the potential for a polio outbreak for months, as the humanitarian crisis unleashed by Israel’s offensive on the strip only grows. Abdel-Rahman’s diagnosis confirms health workers’ worst fears.
Before the war, Gaza’s children were largely vaccinated against polio, the WHO says.
But Abdel-Rahman was not vaccinated because he was born just before Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory offensive on Gaza that forced his family into near-immediate flight. Hospitals came under attack, and regular vaccinations for newborns all but stopped.
The WHO says that for every case of paralysis due to polio, there are hundreds more who likely have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms. Most people who contract the disease do not experience symptoms, and those who do usually recover in a week or so. But there is no cure, and when polio causes paralysis, it is usually permanent. If the paralysis affects breathing muscles, the disease can be fatal.
The Abu El-Jedian family, like many, now live in a crowded tent camp, near heaps of garbage and dirty wastewater flowing into the streets that aid workers describe as breeding grounds for diseases like polio, spread through fecal matter. The United Nations has unveiled plans to begin a vaccination campaign to stop the spread and protect other families from the ordeal the Abu El-Jedian family now faces.
The family of 10 left their home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, moving from shelter to shelter until finally settling in a tent in the central city of Deir Al-Balah.
“My son was not vaccinated because of the continued displacement,” his mother said. “We are sheltering here in the tent in such health conditions where there is no medication, no capabilities, no supplements.”
The mother of eight said she was “stunned” to find out that her boy had contracted polio.
The WHO says that there are at least two other children with paralysis reported in the strip, and samples of their stool have been sent to a lab in Jordan.
In order to vaccinate most of Gaza’s children under the age of 10, UNICEF spokesperson Ammar Ammar said a ceasefire is necessary. The health agencies seek a pause in the fighting, which in recent days has sent thousands of Palestinian families fleeing under successive Israeli evacuation orders. Many children live in areas of Gaza that ongoing Israeli military operations make difficult to reach.
“Without the polio pause or ceasefire, it would be impossible,” Ammar said. “This is due to the continued evacuation orders and continued displacement of the children and their families. In addition, it can be extremely dangerous for teams as well, to be able to reach the children.”
The United Nations aims to vaccinate at least 95 percent of more than 640,000 children, beginning Saturday. Already 1.2 million doses of vaccine have arrived in Gaza, with 400,000 more doses set to arrive in the coming weeks, according to UNICEF. Israel’s military body in charge of civilian affairs, COGAT, said it allowed UN trucks carrying over 25,000 vials of the vaccine through the Kerem Shalom crossing Sunday.
“If this is not implemented, it could have a disastrous effect, not only for the children in Gaza, but also neighboring countries and across the borders in the region,” Ammar said.
Back in the family’s tent in Deir Al-Balah, Nevine Abu El-Jedian gazed at her youngest boy, lying still in a plastic car seat-turned bassinet as her seven other children gathered around.
“I hope he returns to be like his siblings, sitting down and moving,” she said.


Israel issues first Gaza evacuation warning in weeks

Israel issues first Gaza evacuation warning in weeks
Updated 33 sec ago
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Israel issues first Gaza evacuation warning in weeks

Israel issues first Gaza evacuation warning in weeks
GAZA: The Israeli army warned residents to evacuate part of central Gaza on Saturday, saying the military was preparing to use “great force” against Hamas fighters in the area.
The evacuation call is the first in weeks for Gaza as the Israeli military has largely shifted its focus to fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Hamas and the terrorist organizations continue their terrorist activities within your area and, as a result, the IDF (military) will act with great force against these elements,” the evacuation order posted by the Israeli army said, with an attached map listing the blocks to be evacuated.
Palestinians living in areas near the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza have been warned to evacuate under the latest order posted on X.
Israel has destroyed large swathes of Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack last year, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly pledging to secure total victory over the militants.
A year later, the confirmed death toll from the Hamas attack — including hostages killed in captivity — has reached 1,205 on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants abducted 251 hostages during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military has said are dead.
In Gaza, nearly all of its 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once.
At least 41,825 people have been killed, most of them women or children, according to the territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable.
The Israeli military has often returned to areas where it has previously conducted operations in response to reports of resurgent Hamas activity.

Emirates bans pagers, walkie-talkies onboard after Lebanon blasts

Emirates bans pagers, walkie-talkies onboard after Lebanon blasts
Updated 57 min 33 sec ago
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Emirates bans pagers, walkie-talkies onboard after Lebanon blasts

Emirates bans pagers, walkie-talkies onboard after Lebanon blasts
  • mirates said that “such items found in passengers’ hand luggage or checked baggage will be confiscated by Dubai Police.”

Dubai: Dubai-based airline Emirates has banned pagers and walkie-talkies onboard its planes following sabotage attacks in Lebanon, and extended flight cancelations for Middle East destinations due to regional escalation.
“All Passengers traveling on flights to, from or via Dubai are prohibited from transporting pagers and walkie-talkies in checked or cabin baggage,” the carrier said, weeks after a wave of exploding communication devices used by the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which blamed Israel for the attacks.
In a statement posted on its website on Friday, Emirates said that “such items found in passengers’ hand luggage or checked baggage will be confiscated by Dubai Police.”
The blasts last month killed at least 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 across Lebanon.
Emirates, the Middle East’s biggest airline,also announced that its Iraq and Iran routes will remain suspended until Tuesday.
The cancelations were first announced in the wake of a major Iranian attack on Israel this week that saw missiles flying over Iraq and Iran.
Emirates said its flights to Jordan, which were also suspended, would resume on Sunday.
Flights to and from Lebanon will remain suspended until October 15, Emirates said, as Israel steps up attacks on the country, including parts of the capital near its only airport.
Several other carriers have also put some services to and from Beirut and other Middle East airports on hold.


Roadside bomb wounds four in Iraq’s Kirkuk

Roadside bomb wounds four in Iraq’s Kirkuk
Updated 05 October 2024
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Roadside bomb wounds four in Iraq’s Kirkuk

Roadside bomb wounds four in Iraq’s Kirkuk

Baghdad: A roadside bomb wounded four people in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk on Saturday, police sources said.
The bomb targeted a commercial district in the city center. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Earlier in the week, four Iraqi soldiers were killed and three others injured in an ambush on an army convoy southwest of Kirkuk, which Daesh militants claimed responsibility for.
Despite the group’s defeat in 2017, remnants continue to conduct hit-and-run attacks against government forces.


Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 41,825

Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 41,825
Updated 05 October 2024
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Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 41,825

Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 41,825
  • Toll includes 23 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 41,825 people have been killed in almost a year of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 23 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 96,910 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7.


Israeli strike hits north Lebanon as raids pummel Beirut suburbs

Israeli strike hits north Lebanon as raids pummel Beirut suburbs
Updated 05 October 2024
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Israeli strike hits north Lebanon as raids pummel Beirut suburbs

Israeli strike hits north Lebanon as raids pummel Beirut suburbs
  • Israeli strike hits Tripoli in north Lebanon, source says
  • More nightly raids hit Beirut’s southern suburbs

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: An Israeli strike hit Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli for the first time early on Saturday, a Lebanese security source said, after more bombardment hit Beirut’s suburbs and Israeli troops sought to make new ground incursions into southern Lebanon.
The source told Reuters a Hamas official, his wife and two children were killed in the strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli. Hamas-affiliated media said the strike killed a leader of the group’s armed wing.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni-majority port city.

Israel army struck Hezbollah fighters inside mosque

The Israeli military said Saturday its forces struck Hezbollah fighters inside a south Lebanon mosque overnight, the first such strike since clashes erupted between Israel and the militants last year.
“Overnight, with the direction of IDF (army) intelligence, the IAF (air force) struck Hezbollah terrorists who were operating within a command center that was located inside a mosque adjacent to the Salah Ghandour Hospital in southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement.
“The command center was used by the Hezbollah terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the state of Israel.”
Israel has sharply expanded its strikes on Lebanon in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Lebanon’s Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah. Fighting had been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Hamas.
Israel has been carrying out nightly bombardment of Beirut’s once densely populated southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah. Overnight, a military spokesman issued three alerts for residents there to evacuate, and Reuters witnesses then heard at least one blast.
On Friday, Israel said it had targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in the southern suburbs and was assessing the damage after a series of strikes on senior figures in the group.
Israel has eliminated much of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an air attack on Sept. 27.
Lebanon’s government says more than 2,000 people have been killed there in the past year, most in the past two weeks. Strikes on medical teams and facilities, including the Lebanese Red Cross, Lebanese public hospitals and rescue workers affiliated to Hezbollah, have also increased.
Lebanon’s government says more than 1.2 million Lebanese have been forced from their homes, and the United Nations says most displacement shelters in the country are full. Many had gone north to Tripoli or to neighboring Syria, but an Israeli strike on Friday closed the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called the toll on Lebanese civilians “totally unacceptable.”

Iran defiant, Israel weighs options
Israel has been weighing options in its response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Tuesday.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies, also backed by Tehran, in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a rare appearance leading Friday prayers, told a huge crowd in Tehran that Iran and its regional allies would not back down.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi landed in Syria on Saturday for talks after a visit to Lebanon, in which he reiterated support for Lebanon and Hezbollah.
In Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, many buildings have been reduced to rubble. “We’re alive but don’t know for how long,” said Nouhad Chaib, a 40-year-old man already displaced from the south.
On Friday, Hezbollah fired more than 200 rockets into Israel, according to the Israeli military, and air raid sirens continued to sound in its north on Saturday.
The latest bloodletting in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered by the Palestinian Hamas group’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly all of Gaza’s population.

Ground operations
The Lebanese government has accused Israel of targeting civilians, pointing to dozens of women and children killed. It has not broken its total death toll down between civilians and Hezbollah fighters.
Israel says it targets military capabilities and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. It accuses Hezbollah and Hamas of hiding among civilians, which they deny.
Israel, which began ground operations targeting southern Lebanon this week, says they are focussed on villages near the border and has said Beirut “was not on the table,” but has not specified how long the ground incursion would last.
It says the operations aim to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments, which began on Oct. 8, 2023, forced them to evacuate from its north.
Iran’s missile salvo was partly in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Nasrallah, a dominant figure who had turned the group into a powerful armed and political force with reach across the Middle East.
Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying that Hashem Safieddine, rumored to be Nasrallah’s successor, had been targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut on Thursday night, but his fate was not clear.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted a photo of Safieddine and Nasrallah on X on Saturday and urged Khamenei to “take your proxies and leave Lebanon.”