CAIRO, October 29. /TASS/. At least 62 people have been killed in an Israeli bombardment of a neighborhood in the Beit Lahia settlement in the north of the blockaded Gaza Strip, the Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.

According to medical sources, dozens of people were injured in the Israeli attack, with around 20 Arabs taken to a local hospital in serious condition. The bombing destroyed an apartment building housing families of Palestinians forcibly displaced from other regions of the enclave.

The agency points out that civil defense squads and ambulance crews cannot reach the site of the attack because of debris on the roads.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants staged a surprise attack on Israeli territory from Gaza, killing residents of Israeli border settlements and taking over 250 hostages, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as retaliation for the aggressive actions taken by Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. In response, Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the crisis, launching air strikes on Gaza as well as some parts of Lebanon and Syria before starting a ground operation in the Palestinian enclave.