PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) — A polio vaccination campaign officially began Sunday in the Gaza Strip where the United Nations has announced “humanitarian pauses” to allow for large-scale inoculation, a health official told Agence France-Presse.

The campaign was announced after Gaza recorded its first polio case in a quarter of a century last month.

It officially began on Sunday in three health centers in central Gaza, a day after an unspecified number of children were vaccinated in the southern area of the Gaza Strip.

Children aged from one-day-old to 10 years arrived at the centers to receive the dose as drones flew overhead, said Yasser Shaabane, medical director of Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza said.

“There are a lot of drones flying over central Gaza and we hope this vaccination campaign for children will be calm,” Shaabane said.

The campaign began at 9 a.m., he said.

The World Health Organization said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in northern, southern and central areas to facilitate vaccinations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has insisted that these pauses were not amounting to any kind of ceasefire in overall fighting in Gaza.

The campaign aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the besieged Palestinian territory, devastated by almost 11 months of war.