United Nations, Oct 19 (IANS): World Health Organization (WHO) teams have been on the ground delivering supplies to health facilities before the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign starts in southern Gaza, UN humanitarians said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday said the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign in southern Gaza is to start on Saturday and aims to provide more than 293,000 children with the second dose of the vaccine and more than 284,000 with vitamin A supplements, reports Xinhua news agency.

The second round of the polio vaccination campaign concluded in central Gaza on Wednesday, with more than 181,000 children receiving the vaccine and over 148,000 children getting vitamin A supplements, following the first round conducted from September 1 to 12, reaching more than 559,000 children across the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, OCHA said it continues to sound the alarm about the increasingly dire and dangerous situation that civilians in the north of Gaza are facing. Families there are trying to survive in atrocious conditions under heavy bombardment.

The office said the UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, has now confirmed another attack on one of its schools in the north, the third such attack on its facilities this week alone. Scores of people who were sheltering there, including children, were reportedly killed when the school in Jabalya was hit on Thursday.

OCHA warned that the ongoing lack of access to the Jabalya area is having life-threatening impacts. The office said it submitted an urgent request on Friday for the Israeli authorities to facilitate the evacuation of a few dozen people reported to be alive and trapped under rubble.

No food supplies entered the north of Gaza in early October, OCHA said, and the World Food Programme was only able to reach about 100,000 people, given supply shortages, access restrictions and ongoing fighting. On Tuesday, 12 trucks of wheat flour entered northern Gaza after two weeks of closed crossings, but those supplies were only enough for 9,200 families.

OCHA said it has called on the Israeli authorities to allow safe, rapid, sustained and unimpeded access to Jabalya and all areas of the north where people are in desperate need of assistance.

"Aid organisations must be allowed to carry out their life-saving work across the Strip," the office said.

--IANS

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