More than 600,000 children in Gaza are at risk of permanent paralysis and chronic disabilities due to Israel’s prevention of polio vaccines in the besieged Palestinian region.

In a statement released on Sunday, Gaza’s Health Ministry called Israel’s blocking polio vaccines from entering the blockaded territory a time bomb that threatens to spread the epidemic.

It said 602,000 children in Gaza were at risk of “permanent paralysis and chronic disabilities” unless they received the desperately needed vaccines. 

The ministry warned that serious and catastrophic repercussions will be added to the already exhausted health system in Gaza.

“Preventing the entry of vaccines means the collapse of the efforts made over the past seven months, which means serious and catastrophic repercussions will be added to the targeted and exhausted health system, in addition to doubling the social and economic repercussions.”

Elsewhere in the statement, the ministry urged relevant health authorities to apply pressure on Israel to allow the entry of the vaccines.

Poliovirus is highly infectious and most often spreads through sewage and contaminated water. It mainly affects children under the age of five.

Last year, the ministry and several UN agencies and other partners conducted two rounds of polio vaccinations across Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Hamas resistance movement recently called for the prosecution of Israel’s leaders for war crimes as the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza continues with “systematic targeting of children.”

In Gaza, Hamas said, over 1,100 children have been abducted and “around 39,000 have become orphaned by losing one or both parents, while thousands others face the threat of famine, malnutrition, and disease.”

“The fascist occupation continues its systematic targeting of children, using them as human shields, depriving them of education in Gaza.”

It reiterated that the international community’s silence, “which is a shameful stain on human rights and humanitarian organizations… emboldens the occupation to escalate its crimes” against innocent Palestinian children.

Hamas also warned that the resistance group will never forget the regime’s “crimes against our children.”