More than 9,000 students have been killed and more than 15,000 others wounded in the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, reports the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education.
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency, citing the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, reported on Tuesday that a total of 9,241 students had been killed and 15,182 injured since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on October 7, 2023.
The Ministry reported that over 9,138 students were killed in the Gaza Strip, while 14,671 others were injured there.
With Gaza's education system decimated, some 620,000 school-age Palestinians are out of school and more than 88,000 students are unable to enroll in universities, according to the ministry.
In West Bank, 103 students were killed, 505 injured and around 357 students were detained during the nine months of war.
The report also indicated that a total of 497 teachers and administrators have been reported killed, with 3,426 others injured in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
In the Gaza Strip, a total of 353 educational institutions, including government schools, universities, university buildings, and 65 belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA), were targeted in bombings and acts of vandalism.
Out of these buildings, 139 suffered severe damage, 93 were completely destroyed, and 133 government schools in the Gaza Strip were repurposed as shelter centers, according to the report.
In the West Bank, 69 schools and five universities have been attacked and vandalized.
The bloodshed in Gaza’s schools-turned-shelters, which Israel alleges are used by Palestinian resistance movement Hamas as hiding spots, has been a recurring scene throughout the war.
Only in the past 10 days, five UN-run schools have been hit by Israel forces, UNRWA posted on social X platform.
UNRWA in its recent report said that its facilities in Gaza had been attacked by Israel 453 times since the war began last October, and that more than 500 people sheltering in its buildings had been killed. The UN has also said that 80 percent of schools in the territory have been destroyed or damaged.
UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, has recently described the number of wounded children as “staggering” in Gaza.
Israel’s war has killed at least 38,713 people, including nearly 16,000 children, in Gaza since early October last year. Tens of thousands have also been wounded.
Some 21,000 children are also missing while 17,000 have been orphaned.
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