Islamist group Hamas has told the main Palestinian telecoms company to block access to pornographic Internet sites in the Gaza Strip, a Hamas government official said on Monday.

Gaza’s Ministry of Communications said in a statement that telecommunications firm PALTEL has agreed to block Internet users in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave from viewing adult websites starting this month.

“The aim of the move is to protect the Palestinian community from cultural pollution and to protect the young generations from the misuse of the Internet through viewing pornographic sites,” Hamas government spokesman Taher al-Nono said.

An Internet provider in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas seized in June after routing President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah forces, estimated that about 400,000 Gazans surf the Web and said almost half of them were aged 18-35.