Middle East crisis live: Senior Hamas commander killed by Israeli police in West Bank, IDF says | Israel

The charity ActionAid has said a “full and permanent” ceasefire is needed to pull Gaza back from the brink of a “devastating health crisis”.

Referring to the forthcoming polio vaccine rollout, the charity said:

While the pauses will allow some children to receive life-saving polio vaccinations, they fall far short of what is urgently needed to pull Gaza back from the brink of a devastating health crisis and improve the dire living conditions that are enabling diseases to thrive.

It added:

Gaza needs a full and permanent ceasefire now so that aid – including fuel which is urgently needed to keep hospitals running – can enter safely and at the enormous scale required to stop this catastrophic humanitarian crisis deteriorating any further.

The international community must increase its efforts to secure one, including halting arms sales to the Israeli government and imposing sanctions.

Peter Beaumont

The World Health Organization has said it delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century.

The vaccinations, due to begin this weekend, will be accompanied by three-day pauses in the fighting in several areas of the territory to allow the inoculation of more than 640,000 children.

However, UN officials warned that Hamas and the Israeli military “must respect” the humanitarian pauses negotiated to allow the vaccinations, after two incidents this week – one deadly – when Israeli forces fired on aid vehicles, raising questions over how safely the vaccinations could be conducted.

The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, confirmed vaccinations are due to start on Sunday with daily pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm.

UN officials have said the vaccination campaign will be carried out in three-day phases in different zones of the Gaza Strip.

Read the full report here.

A WHO official has said 1.2 million polio vaccine doses have already been delivered to Gaza ahead of the rollout campaign, with 400,000 more en route, Reuters reports.

A spokesperson from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said:

The UK is deeply concerned by the ongoing IDF military operation in the occupied West Bank.

We recognise Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.

The risk of instability is serious and the need for de-escalation urgent. We continue to call on Israeli authorities to exercise restraint, adhere to international law, and clamp down on the actions of those who seek to inflame tensions. The UK strongly condemns settler violence and inciteful remarks such as those made by Israel’s National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, which threaten the status-quo of the Holy Sites in Jerusalem.

It is in no one’s interest for further conflict and instability to spread in the West Bank.

Louise Wateridge, of the UN, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier about the polio vaccination programme starting on Sunday in Gaza:

The campaign will be in the middle area, the southern area and the northern area of the Gaza Strip.

She also outlined details of the rollout, which would require a follow-up:

From Sunday, we’re giving out two oral doses of the polio vaccination, and then four weeks after this initial round of campaigns, we will need to repeat the vaccination again, this is for 640,000 children across the Gaza Strip.”

She added:

It’s so important that we get this vaccination campaign out as soon as possible, and that we have the safety to do this, because the repercussions will be disastrous for not just children in the Gaza Strip, but children in the region. And they’ve already been put through so much.

Israeli border police killed a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank on Friday, the military said.

It said Wassem Hazem, identified as the commander of Hamas in the volatile city of Jenin, was killed in a car it said contained weapons, ammunition and large quantities of cash.

According to Reuters, the military said two other Hamas gunmen were killed by a drone while trying to escape from the vehicle.

Julian Borger

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said they carried out an airstrike on a humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza aimed at “armed assailants” trying to hijack it but the charity that organised the aid said people killed in the strike were employees of the transport company it was working with.

The convoy, organised by the US-based NGO Anera, was carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah on Thursday evening at the time of the attack. Its route had been coordinated in advance with the IDF, under a deconfliction process intended to prevent aid vehicles being bombed.

Anera’s Palestine country director, Sandra Rasheed, said: “This is a shocking incident. The convoy, which was coordinated by Anera and approved by Israeli authorities, included an Anera employee who was fortunately unharmed.

“Tragically, several individuals, all employed by the transportation company we work with, were killed in the attack. They were in the first vehicle of the convoy.”

Unconfirmed reports from Gaza said five people were killed in the airstrike.

An IDF statement confirmed the route had been coordinated, but claimed that “during the convoy’s movement, a number of armed assailants seized control of the vehicle in the front of the convoy (a Jeep) and began to lead it”.

It added: “After the takeover and further verification that a precise strike on the armed assailants’ vehicle can be carried out, a strike was conducted.

“No damage was caused to the other vehicles in the convoy and it reached its destination as planned. The strike on the armed assailants removed the threat of them seizing control over the humanitarian convoy.”

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.

A polio vaccination campaign in Gaza is planned to begin on Sunday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said.

The WHO said that Israel’s military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccinations of 640,000 children against polio.

The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s senior official for the Palestinian territories.

More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.

• The Israeli military said it had killed five more militants in a large-scale operation in the occupied West Bank early Thursday, including a well-known local commander. There was no immediate Palestinian confirmation of the death of Mohammed Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, a commander in the Islamic Jihad militant group in the Nur Shams refugee camp on the outskirts of the city of Tulkarem.

• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had carried out an airstrike on a humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza aimed at “armed assailants” trying to hijack it but the charity that organised the aid said people killed in the strike were employees of the transport company it was working with. The convoy, organised by the US-based NGO Anera, was carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah at the time of the attack. Its route had been coordinated in advance with the IDF. Anera’s Palestine country director, Sandra Rasheed, said: “This is a shocking incident. The convoy, which was coordinated by Anera and approved by Israeli authorities, included an Anera employee who was fortunately unharmed.”

• Israel told the United States that an initial review found that shots were fired at a clearly marked World Food Programme (WFP) vehicle in the Gaza Strip after a “communication error” between Israeli military units, the deputy US envoy to the United Nations said on Thursday. “We have urged them to immediately rectify the issues within their system,” deputy US ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told a UN security council meeting on Gaza. “Israel must not only take ownership for its mistakes, but also take concrete actions to ensure the IDF does not fire on UN personnel again.”

• The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has launched a process that could lead to sanctions on Israeli ministers he said were responsible for “unacceptable hate messages” against Palestinians. Arriving at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Borrell said he had begun consultations with the EU’s 27 member states on whether they consider it “appropriate including in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been launching unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians” and made proposals that “go clearly against international law” and incite war crimes.

• As salvage operations began on an abandoned Greek-flagged oil tanker with deck fires still burning from Houthi rebel attacks, the EU’s Red Sea naval mission Aspides said on Thursday that no oil spill had been detected. Yemen’s Houthi militants carried out multiple assaults, including planting bombs on the already disabled Sounion that is laden with about 1 million barrels of oil. On Wednesday, the Iran-aligned militants said they would allow salvage crews to tow the ship – which has been on fire since 23 August.

• Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris told CNN on Thursday that a ceasefire and hostage release deal was needed in Gaza while she reiterated support for Israel and maintained her position that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris said that she would not change US president Joe Biden’s policy on supplying Israel with arms for its war in Gaza if elected in November.