DUBAI, January 28. /TASS/. At least 40 people have died as a result of Israel’s strikes on residential houses in the city of Gaza and the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, the Al Jazeera television channel reported.

No further details were provided.

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.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 26,400 Palestinians have been killed and more than 65,000 have been wounded in the enclave since October 7, 2023.