BEIRUT, November 20. /TASS/. At least 12 people have died and dozens have been wounded as a result of Israel’s shelling attack on a school of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the central Gaza Strip, the WAFA news agency reported on Monday, citing its sources.

According to the agency, this UNRWA school in the Bureij refugee camp is housing around 2,000 displaced persons.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on November 19 that as man as 176 people were seeking refuge at the agency’s facilities had been killed and around 800 has been wounded since the beginning of the escalation in the Middle East. The agency is verifying data on the losses among its employees.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.