A polio vaccine drive resumed in northern Gaza on Saturday but a strike hit one health centre injuring six people, including children
A polio vaccine drive resumed in northern Gaza on Saturday but a strike hit one health centre injuring six people, including children AFP

The World Health Organization said four children were among six people wounded Saturday in a strike on a polio vaccination centre in northern Gaza.

"We have received an extremely concerning report that the Sheikh Radwan primary health care centre in northern Gaza was struck today while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving polio vaccination in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"Six people, including four children, were injured."

Tedros did not specify who carried out the strike but a source in Gaza's civil defence agency told AFP that it was "an Israeli quadcopter that fired two missiles which hit the wall of Sheikh Radwan clinic".

The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

The military has been pounding northern Gaza for weeks in a major offensive it says is aimed at stopping Hamas militants from regrouping.

UN agency chiefs have spoken of an "apocalyptic" situation in north Gaza as the area has been "denied basic aid and life-saving supplies".

The WHO launched the second round of child polio vaccinations in northern Gaza on Saturday after Israeli bombing halted an earlier attempt.

The vaccination drive began on September 1 with a successful first round, after the besieged Palestinian territory confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years.

"A WHO team was at the site just before" Saturday's strike, Tedros said.

"This attack, during humanitarian pause, jeopardises the sanctity of health protection for children and may deter parents from bringing their children for vaccination," he added.

The WHO says some 119,000 children in the north are awaiting their second dose, while 452,000 have been vaccinated in central and southern Gaza.

Typically spread through sewage and contaminated water, poliovirus is highly infectious.

It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal, mainly affecting children under the age of five.

Hamas's October 2023 attack, which started the Gaza war, resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed 43,314 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry which the UN considers reliable.