NEW YORK, (PIC)
The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that more than 70% of the agency’s schools in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged.
Lazzarini stated in a post on X on Monday that the majority of UNRWA schools have become shelters crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced families and cannot be used for education.
Due to the internet outage, pictures are being published for the first time of horrific scenes following an Israeli bombing that directly targeted the displaced inside one of the UNRWA’s schools during the past few days.
He added that more than 600,000 children in Gaza, half of whom were in UNRWA schools, are suffering from severe trauma and living under the rubble, deprived of education.
The ongoing war of extermination on Gaza for the 11th consecutive month has destroyed the entire educational system, and placed hundreds of thousands of students in all basic and higher education levels, facing an unknown future.
Earlier, Farid Abu Azra, the Director General of Education at UNRWA, reported that two-thirds of the UN agency’s schools were bombed by the Israeli occupation army, while 197 of its employees were martyred.
He stressed that what the students lost cannot be compensated for and will greatly affect their academic achievement and personal development, and the possibility of increasing the rate of school dropouts, delaying academic progress, exposure to the risks of child labor, early marriage, and the deterioration of the child’s concepts of human rights and shaking his sense of belonging to his identity.
The ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza has led to the martyrdom of more than 40,738 citizens, the injury of 94,154 others, and the displacement of 90% of the population of the Strip, according to UN data.
