IDF Cpt. Yarden Zakay, wounded in Gaza’s Rafah in September, dies of his injuries
21-year-old was injured in blast that killed 4 other troops; WHO: 2nd round of Gaza polio vaccinations to begin, but area covered is ‘substantially reduced’ compared to 1st round
An IDF soldier wounded during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip in September succumbed to his wounds, the military announced Friday.
Cpt. Yarden Zakay, 21, a platoon commander in the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Hadera, was seriously wounded on September 17.
In the same incident, four other soldiers — Cpt. Daniel Mimon Toaff, Staff Sgt. Agam Naim, Staff Sgt. Amit Bakri and Staff Sgt. Dotan Shimon — were killed, and several others were wounded. Naim was the first female soldier to have been killed during the IDF’s ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
According to an IDF probe, the soldiers were hit by weaponry that detonated inside a building in Rafah.
Zakay’s death took Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 368.
Meanwhile, the IDF said it was continuing to strike Hamas targets in Gaza as troops pressed on with an operation against the terror group in the northern Strip’s Jabalia.
The IDF said troops killed dozens of terror operatives in the area in the past day.
The military also said that reservists with the 252nd Division continued operations in the Netzarim Corridor area, and Gaza Division’s forces battled Hamas in Rafah.
Also Friday, the World Health Organization said that a second round of child polio vaccinations in northern Gaza would begin on Saturday after Israeli airstrikes in the area had halted the drive.
“Polio vaccination in northern Gaza is ready to resume tomorrow,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X. “We are assured of the necessary humanitarian pause in Gaza City to conduct the campaign.”
“Unfortunately, the area covered is substantially reduced compared to the first round of vaccination, which will leave some children unprotected and at higher risk of infection,” he said.
The first stage of the vaccination drive began on September 1 after Gaza confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years.
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.
The WHO says a minimum of two separate doses of oral vaccine are needed to interrupt poliovirus transmission, requiring 90 percent of all children aged under 10 to be vaccinated in a given community.
The announcement that the drive would recommence was later confirmed by Israel’s COGAT military body that facilitates the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
COGAT said the move was approved by the political echelon and that hundreds of thousands of children will be vaccinated from November 2 to 4 between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m.
The vaccine drive will be coordinated with the IDF’s Southern Command operating in Gaza in order to ensure that recipients can safely reach medical centers where the vaccines will be administered, COGAT said.
Meanwhile, there was growing international concern over the humanitarian situation in north Gaza.
The unfolding situation in the northern Gaza Strip is “apocalyptic,” the heads of the major UN agencies said Friday, warning that its entire population was at “imminent risk” of death.
“The situation unfolding in North Gaza is apocalyptic… the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” said the joint statement from heads of organizations that form the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee.
WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said Friday that “because of the attacks” on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the medical center’s malnutrition stabilization unit had closed, meaning there was no such facility remaining in the north.
The IDF said Thursday that it had carried out an operation at the hospital where “dozens of terrorists” were found hiding out, charging that some of them were posing as hospital staff. Israeli forces who raided the hospital last week captured around 100 suspected Hamas operatives, the IDF said at the time.
“Before that occurred, we were seeing an increasing number, month on month, of children with severe acute malnutrition who were requiring treatment,” Harris told a media briefing.
“We’ve not really seen any food aid enter north Gaza since October 2. People are running out of ways to cope. The food systems have collapsed and the opportunity to care for those who are at the most critical stage is not there anymore,” she said.
“Over 86 percent of the population across Gaza are experiencing high levels of food insecurity.
“It’s always the children who suffer the most,” she said.
Citing figures from COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for facilitating the delivery of aid into Gaza, Haaretz revealed Thursday that the amount of aid in tons that entered the Strip during the month of October was the least this year.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, the IDF launched a wide-scale campaign in the Strip, which the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says has left more than 42,000 people dead or presumed dead.
This toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it had killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
