SKOPJE /North Macedonia/, November 30. /TASS/. Israel will continue its operation in the Gaza Strip until it frees all its hostages and until it destroys the Palestinian radical movement Hamas, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said upon his arrival for a two-day OSCE ministerial meeting in Skopje.

"We will continue to fight until we will bring back all our hostages and until we will eliminate Hamas. The world should be united to free Gaza from Hamas <…> in order to ensure that such atrocities will not take place in any other place of the world," the top diplomat told journalists.

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.