The United Nations (UN) is preparing to vaccinate about 640,000 children in Gaza, an area where at least one infant has been paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first case there in 25 years, the WHO confirmed on August 23.

Juliette Touma, communications director for UNRWA, a U.N. refugee agency, said the U.N. called for a humanitarian ceasefire earlier this month and hopes to start the vaccination campaign on September 1.

The baby with polio is named Abdul-Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan and will turn one on September 1, the WHO said.

The baby's mother, Nivine Abu Al-Jidyan, said she was worried about her child after health officials said they could do little to help him.

"I was shocked that my son was infected when the war was raging and the borders were sealed in such terrible conditions and lack of medicine. Will my son be sick like this forever?"

"He is my only son. He has the right to be treated, to be able to walk, run and move like before… It is unfair that my son has to stay in a tent without treatment or care."

At Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, Umm Eliane Bakr is also worried that her 19-month-old daughter could be infected with polio due to her poor health and malnutrition.

She hopes her child will be vaccinated soon, but said she fears she will not be able to travel safely in an area that is constantly under Israeli air strikes.

"I don't want to go out and get bombed, I don't want anything to happen to my daughter, I don't want to be attacked. I need them to agree to a ceasefire, a ceasefire so I can get my daughter vaccinated."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week dismissed some media reports that Israel was preparing to propose a general humanitarian truce, saying only a more limited plan had been proposed.

"There will be no decision to temporarily suspend the fighting to carry out polio vaccination, only a decision to designate certain areas in the Gaza Strip to carry out this activity."

Senior Hamas official Izzat El-Reshiq has reaffirmed the organization's support for an initiative to impose an emergency humanitarian truce across the enclave to allow for the implementation of a polio vaccination campaign by the United Nations and other international organizations.

He described Netanyahu's remarks as an attempt to stall the process by refusing to heed calls from the UN.

Family in flames

Israeli forces continued to bombard areas across the Gaza Strip on Thursday in their battle with Hamas militants. Palestinian health officials said the Israeli military strikes had killed 34 people.

An airstrike on a house in Gaza City killed eight Palestinians, including several children, and three others were killed in an airstrike on a motorbike in Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border.

Neighbors of the family whose home was bombed in Gaza City said they were able to put ladders into the building to rescue the family trapped inside, but were only able to save a little girl.

"Then their family was engulfed in flames and we couldn't save them."

The bloody war is part of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was sparked on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages.

Israel's subsequent offensive against the enclave killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, forced the evacuation of nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, led to famine and a series of genocide accusations at the World Court that Israel has rejected.

Nguyen Quang Minh (according to Reuters)