NEW YORK, October 25. /TASS/. Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh says that not only Hamas militants but also other Palestinian groups took part in the October 7 attack on Israel.

"One serious complication that has not been publicly discussed since the October 7 attack is that the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, were not the sole attackers or collectors of hostages on a day in which there was no Israeli Army presence in the kibbutzim and villages under attack for at least eight hours," the journalist wrote in an article published on his website. "We know that the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade participated," Hersh quoted a US official as saying.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 when militants from the Gaza-based Palestinian radical group Hamas staged a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. In response, Israel announced a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and began delivering air strikes on the enclave and certain parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are underway in the West Bank of the Jordan River as well.