MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/. Palestine intends to send letters to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and the Russian Foreign Ministry over the strike on the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza, Palestinian Ambassador to Russia Abdel Hafiz Nofal said on the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

"We are going to send letters to Russian Patriarch Kirill and to the Foreign Ministry," he said.

The ambassador said that the strike on the Greek Orthodox church was "a catastrophic event," calling it "the most violent assault on Gaza."

Earlier, Archbishop Alexios of Tiberias of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem told the Greek television channel ERT-1 that Israel "hit the offices and the entrance of the [St. Porphyrius] monastery. They were bombarded with a missile and the whole building collapsed." The archbishop said that there were many Christians inside and that there were casualties among them. More than 400 people had sought shelter in the monastery and the church of St. Porphyrius.

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem "expresses its strongest condemnation of the Israeli air strike that has struck its church compound in the city of Gaza." The Church slammed such attacks as a war crime. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry wrote on its X page (former Twitter) that two people, including a child, were killed as a result of the strike on the Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip. According to the ministry, dozens of people suffered different injuries.