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    Polio Vaccination Underway in Gaza

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    Aid agencies said that children in some areas of northern Gaza where Israel is mounting an offensive against Hamas will miss the doses, compromising the effectiveness of the campaign.Thousands of children in Gaza City were receiving a second dose of polio vaccine this weekend in an effort that was delayed by intense Israeli bombardment and mass evacuation orders in northern Gaza, the United Nations and other aid agencies said.The second phase of the vaccination campaign was originally set to begin on Oct. 23 across the north of the territory, but it was postponed due to a lack of assurances about pauses in the fighting and bombardment to ensure the safety of health workers, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said in a statement on Friday.The first round of vaccinations in September took place across northern Gaza. Since then, the Israeli military has launched an intense offensive in northern Gaza against what it has said is a resurgence of Hamas in the area.A humanitarian pause for the second phase of the vaccination campaign was only assured for Gaza City, according to the U.N. agencies. They said that around 15,000 children under 10 in northern towns where the Israeli military has been carrying out the offensive over the last few weeks “remain inaccessible and will be missed during the campaign, compromising its effectiveness.”COGAT, the Israeli government agency that oversees policy in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, said on Sunday that 58,604 children under 10 had been vaccinated in northern Gaza since the second phase of the campaign began a day earlier. It added that Israel would continue to work to “facilitate an effective vaccination campaign.”The Gazan Health Ministry confirmed the number of vaccinations, and the campaign was expected to continue through Monday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      First Sea-Borne Aid Reaches Gaza Amid Fears About Security and Malnutrition

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      The 200 tons of food provided by a celebrity chef’s charity arrived as UNICEF said rising numbers of children in Gaza were facing food deprivation.The first shipment of aid to reach Gaza by sea in almost two decades was fully unloaded on Saturday on a makeshift jetty in the Mediterranean, marking a milestone in a venture that Western officials hope will ease the enclave’s worsening food deprivation.The ship, the Open Arms, towed a barge from Cyprus loaded with about 200 tons of rice, flour, lentils and canned tuna, beef and chicken, supplied by the World Central Kitchen charity.José Andrés, the Spanish American chef who founded the World Central Kitchen, said his team would begin dispatching the food by truck, including to Gaza’s north, an area gripped by lawlessness and badly damaged by Israeli airstrikes.But the distribution was set to unfold in the shadow of a series of attacks that have killed or wounded Palestinians scrambling for desperately needed food. United Nations aid groups had to largely suspend deliveries in northern Gaza last month, and its human rights office has documented more than two dozen such attacks.The latest bloodshed took place late Thursday in Gaza City, where at least 20 people died after an aid convoy came under attack. Gazan health officials and the Israeli military traded blame; many details about what had unfolded remained unclear on Saturday.World Central Kitchen offered few details about its distribution plan, even as it was loading a second supply ship in Cyprus. The Israeli military said in a statement that it had deployed naval and ground forces to secure the area where the supplies were unloaded, though it remained unclear who would handle the distribution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More