DUBAI, December 22. /TASS/. At least eight people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced individuals in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reported.

According to the TV channel, the refugees were housed at a school in the Al-Daraj neighborhood.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza-based Palestinian radical group Hamas staged a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, killing residents of border settlements and seizing more than 240 hostages. Hamas 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. In response, Israel has declared a state of war readiness; announced a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians; and began delivering air strikes on the enclave and certain parts of Lebanon and Syria, followed by a ground operation in the enclave. Clashes are underway in the West Bank as well.