Over 3000 Palestinian Students Killed during Israeli Airstrikes

Gaza – Out of every 1,000 students enrolled in Gaza Strip schools, five were killed between October 7, the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip and November 11. This was according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). 

It said 3,141 students (3,117 in the Gaza Strip and 24 in the West Bank) were killed during this period in the Israeli airstrikes and gunfire, while 4,863 students (4,613 in the Gaza Strip and 250 in the West Bank) were injured. 

At the same time, 67 students were detained, all of them in the West Bank.

The PCBS said the number of teachers and staff in the schools killed has reached 130, all in the Gaza Strip, while the number of injured among teachers and administrators reached 403. 

Meanwhile, more than 40 individuals, including teachers and administrators in the West Bank schools, were detained.

As for attacks on schools’ infrastructure, 239 government schools were bombed in the Gaza Strip, of which 45 schools were severely destroyed, and 50 UNRWA schools were attacked. 

Nonetheless, schools in the West Bank were not spared from the Israeli occupation attacks, where 27 governmental schools were attacked in the West Bank.

As a result of the war, all classes in the Gaza Strip have been suspended and schools closed since the beginning of the aggression, depriving about 608,000 students of their right to school education. At the same time, 70 governmental and 145 UNRWA school buildings were also used as shelters and a refuge for displaced people.

As for the schools in the West Bank, attendance was not normal due to the repeated strikes and raids on a number of population centers, which hindered about 1,750 male and female teachers from reaching their schools every day, where local education did not exceed 90%.

The number of higher education students killed in the aggression reached 446 students (438 in the Gaza Strip and eight in the West Bank), and 14 employees working in higher educational institutions in the Gaza Strip were killed. 

The number of higher education institutions in Palestine that were partially or completely damaged since October 7 reached 14 institutions (12 institutions in the Gaza Strip and two institutions in the West Bank), which led to a complete interruption of university education in the Gaza Strip, as well as the interruption of face-to-face education and the shift to online education in some higher education institutions in the West Bank.