JERUSALEM: Israel rescinded the mandatory wearing of face masks outdoors and fully reopened schools on Sunday in the latest return to relative normality, boosted by a mass-vaccination campaign against the COVID-19 pandemic.
With almost 54 percent of its 9.3 million population having received both shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Israel has logged sharp drops in contagion and cases.
The police-enforced wearing of protective masks outdoors, ordered a year ago, was scrapped from Sunday, but the Health Ministry said the requirement still applied for indoor public spaces and urged citizens to keep masks to hand.
With Israeli kindergarteners, elementary and high school students already back in class, middle school pupils who had been kept at home or attended class sporadically returned to pre-pandemic schedules.
The education ministry said that schools should continue to encourage personal hygiene, ventilation of classrooms and to maintain social distancing as much distance as possible during breaks and lessons.
Israel counts East Jerusalem Palestinians among its population and has been administering the vaccines there.
The 5.2 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Islamist Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have been receiving limited supplies of vaccines provided by Israel, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, the global COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme and China.
Israel rescinds outdoor coronavirus mask requirement
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Israel rescinds outdoor coronavirus mask requirement
- Police-enforced wearing of protective masks outdoors scrapped from Sunday
- But requirement still applied for indoor public spaces
Israeli strike kills 2 teenagers in Gaza
- Palestinian death toll since the start of the war in October 2023 rises to 71,654
GAZA: The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said on Saturday that Israeli fire had killed three people, including two children, in two separate incidents in the northern Gaza Strip.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed the two teenagers in a drone strike, while the military claimed it eliminated two “terrorists” who planted an explosive device near troops.
The civil defense agency, which operates as a rescue service, said the drone killed the two near Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza.
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Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital said on Saturday it received the two bodies, adding they were two boys aged 13 and 15.
The territory’s Al-Shifa Hospital said it received the two bodies, adding they were two boys aged 13 and 15.
The military said the pair had posed an “immediate threat” to its soldiers.
“Earlier today ... troops operating in the northern Gaza Strip identified several terrorists who crossed the Yellow Line, planted an explosive device in the area, and approached the troops, posing an immediate threat to them,” the military said in a statement.
Under a US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect on Oct. 10, Israeli forces have withdrawn to positions behind a so-called “Yellow Line” in Gaza, though they remain in control of more than half of the territory.
“Following the identification, the (Israeli air force) struck and eliminated the terrorists in order to remove the threat,” the military said.
A military press officer claimed that its troops had “killed two terrorists and not children,” without specifying the ages of those killed.
The civil defense said another fatality was also reported in a separate incident when an Israeli quadcopter struck a group of civilians in Jabalia, also in northern Gaza.
It did not provide details on the person killed in that incident. The press officer said the military had only one incident report.
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were in Israel on Saturday to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, mainly to discuss Gaza, two people briefed on the matter said.
Gaza has been reduced to rubble in the war that was triggered by an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Since the beginning of the war, the death toll in Gaza now stands at 71,654 people, with 481 deaths since the October ceasefire, according to Health Ministry data.
The ceasefire has largely halted fighting between Israel and Hamas, but both sides have accused each other of violating its terms.
