DUBAI, November 30. /TASS/. Over 130,000 residents of the northern Gaza Strip had to flee their homes in the past several weeks, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said.
"The ongoing military operation in the north has uprooted 130,000 people over the past seven weeks," the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) quoted him as saying.
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas staged a surprise attack on Israeli territory from Gaza, killing residents of Israeli border settlements and taking hostages. In response, Israel launched a military operation in the Palestinian enclave to destroy Hamas military and political wings and free all hostages.