MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been making tremendous efforts to help Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but the humanitarian situation there has aggravated anyway since the hostilities resumed, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN headquarters in Geneva Gennady Gatilov said.

"The WHO’s work in the Middle East is very important. They have been making tremendous efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip," Gatilov told Rossiya 24 television as he described the situation in the Palestinian enclave as dire. "During the truce, certain humanitarian items, including medicines, were brought there, but the situation has aggravated since Israel resumed fighting," the Russian diplomat added.

According to Gatilov, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) are working jointly with the WHO.

Tensions in the Middle East flared up again on October 7 when some 3,000 Hamas militants launched a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian movement 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. Israel declared a total siege of Gaza and started carrying out strikes on the Palestinian enclave, as well as on certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.