MOSCOW, October 18. /TASS/. The Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament) on Thursday will discuss a draft address to the UN regarding the situation in the Middle East, including the strike on the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said.

"Tomorrow, we will prepare a State Duma address on the situation in the Middle East. <...> Tomorrow, we will consider our address in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the situation in Gaza related to the bombing of the hospital," Volodin said at the chamber’s plenary session.

The Duma press service added that Volodin "instructed the Committee on International Affairs to prepare a text of the State Duma’s address to the UN condemning the attack on the hospital in the Gaza Strip." "We should express our opinion and state our position on that issue. It is absolutely unacceptable to bomb hospitals and civilians," Volodin emphasized, addressing the deputies.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs, said that the MPs were also planning to address the world’s parliaments. He said that supporting "only one of the parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the state of Israel" was "completely undiplomatic and unwise." "Such a policy could lead to many hundreds and thousands more victims, the responsibility for which will fall on Washington. Therefore, a separate State Duma address to the UN and the world's parliaments will be adopted tomorrow," Slutsky added.

More than 500 people were killed in Tuesday’s attack on the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City. The Palestinian radical group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, pinned the blame on Israel’s Air Force, while Israel denied responsibility, saying that the powerful explosion had resulted from a misfired rocket launched from within the Palestinian enclave by Islamic Jihad. Palestine and Syria declared three days of mourning, while Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas withdrew from a summit in Amman slated for October 19.