GAZA, (PIC)
About 625,000 children, including 300,000 UNRWA students, have lost one year of school, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said on social media platform X on Wednesday.
“Four in five school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged. They need to be rebuilt or fixed to be used as schools,” Lazzarini added.
Nearly 70% of UNRWA schools have been hit, he said, highlighting the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law.
“95% of these schools were being used as shelters for displaced people when they were hit.”
The UN official further pointed out that this war is also affecting tens of thousands of children in the West Bank.
The longer children stay out of school, the more difficult it becomes for them to catch up on learning losses, he concluded.
The Palestinian death toll from the ongoing Israeli genocide war on the Gaza Strip has risen to nearly 40,000, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
During the past 24 hours, the Israeli forces killed 36 people and wounded 54 others, bringing the total death toll to 39,965 and injuries to 92,294 since the Israeli war broke out in early October 2023.
