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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. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party will sink like the Titanic if Prime Minister Narendra Modi is left in command, stated firebrand saffron party leader Subramanian Swamy in an X post on Monday.

"If we in BJP want to see our party sink like the Titantic Ship then Modi is the best to command," he said, adding, "By-Election results show BJP is cracking up to sink forever."

Swamy's post comes after the I.N.D.I.A. bloc managed massive gains in the assembly bypolls, whose results were declared on Saturday. The coalition managed to win 10 of the 13 seats, restricting BJP to only two victories. An Independent candidate won the 13th seat.

Among the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, TMC and Congress were the biggest winners, bagging four seats each, while AAP and DMK managed one each. BJP also lost the Badrinath seat in Uttarakhand, in what is seen as a blow by the Congress following the saffron party's loss in Ayodhya in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Congress sought to project a larger political message in the Badrinath victory saying that Hindutva followers were being electorally bashed up in places of significance to Hindu religion.

Swamy has been railing against BJP top leaders like Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for some time now. When the Modi government declared June 25 as the 'murder of Constitution day', Swamy remarked on X "What was Mody [Modi] or Amit Shah’s contribution to actively opposing the Emergency?", adding, "Credit snitching is a bad disease."

Recently, he also spoke on the consequences Modi's visit to Russia would have on India-US relations.

After the Lok Sabha polls, which saw Modi return to power for a third term, albeit with diminished margins, and only with help from alliance partners Nitish Kumar and JD(U) and Chandrababu Naidu and TDP, Swamy remarked, "The most devastating outcome of the 2024 Lok Sabha Election Results could be that Modi will find his assembled crowds evaporated before he could say 'namaste'."

"The surprise is that he did not realise that in a democracy no one can take the people for granted," he had concluded.

The Karnataka Congress on Monday junked reports that the State Road Transport Corporation would be hiking bus fares. The party on X noted that transport minister has not placed any such proposals before the government.

The party's account further noted that BJP leaders should 'stop spreading lies' and rather answer about the increase in auto part prices, fuel prices, and train fares in the last ten years.

Karnataka Congress, in the post, continued that people should be allowed to answer about the burden on state governments due to the central government's price hike policy.

BJP leaders like Tejasvi Surya took potshots at the Congress government over news of the alleged fare hike, attributing it to the party's 'Khatakhat Model of Governance.'

KSRTC chairperson, S R Srinivas, however said on Sunday that the body has submitted a proposal to the government to hike the fare by 15 to 20 per cent.

"We had a board meeting two days ago. We have proposed a hike of 15 per cent to 20 per cent. The rest is up to the discretion of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. If KSRTC is to survive, fare hike is inevitable," he said.

The chairperson also noted that fuel and auto parts have seen prices go up substantially, but there has been no increase in bus fares since 2019.

"The salary revision of the KSRTC employees has not been done since 2020. Hence, increasing the ticket price is necessary," Srinivas added.

As per the chairperson, the corporation has suffered a loss of Rs 295 crore in the last three months.

To a question on whether the hike would burden male passengers since women are allowed to travel free of cost under the 'Shakti' scheme, Srinivas said there is no question of putting burden only on men. He noted that the state government continues to bear the expenses for women travelling in buses.