Polio vaccination campaign in Gaza surpassing target: UNICEF

The UN children's agency says a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza reached 189,000 children, surpassing its target and providing a "rare bright spot" in nearly 11 months of war.

UNICEF said Wednesday that more than 500 teams deployed across central Gaza this week, administering the vaccine to children under 10.

It said Israel and Hamas observed limited pauses in the fighting to facilitate the campaign. UN agencies now hope to expand the campaign to the harder-hit north and south of the territory. They hope to vaccinate a total of 640,000 children.

The campaign was launched after Gaza had its first reported polio case in 25 years - a 10-month-old boy, now paralysed in the leg.

Health experts have warned of disease outbreaks in the territory, where the vast majority of people have been displaced, often multiple times, and where hunger is widespread.

Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed in to squalid tent camps with few if any public services as Israel continues in to offensive, which has killed more than 40,800 people in Gaza, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed in to southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people.