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Rabat – On Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Education reported a grim toll of 4,551 students killed and 8,193 injured since the onset of Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) devastating war, targeting civilians both in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
Disturbingly, the number of students killed in Gaza alone has surpassed 4,510, with 7,911 others wounded.
Furthermore, 231 teachers and administrators lost their lives, and 756 sustained injuries in the Gaza Strip, compounding the human tragedy. In the occupied West Bank, 41 students lost their lives, with 282 others injured, and an additional 85 subjected to arrests.
The bloody war extended to educational infrastructure, with 281 government schools and 65 UNRWA-affiliated schools bombed in Gaza. As a result, 83 of them suffered severe damage, and seven were obliterated. In the West Bank, 38 schools were raided and vandalized.
Euro-Med Monitor, a Geneva-based human rights organization, revealed that the IOF specifically targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in deliberate air raids, resulting in the deaths of individuals holding professorial, doctoral, and master’s degrees.
The organization expressed concern over the lack of justification for these targeted attacks and cited difficulties in documentation due to communication disruptions and movement restrictions.
The rights group identified 17 individuals with professor degrees, 59 with doctoral degrees, and 18 with master’s degrees among those targeted. However, it emphasized that the true toll may be higher due to challenges in accounting for missing individuals.
Euro-Med Monitor noted that many targeted academics were instrumental across various academic disciplines, contributing significantly to research in Gaza’s universities.
The deliberate targeting of cultural buildings, including historically significant institutions, leads the organization to assert that Israel is intentionally undermining every aspect of life in Gaza.
The destruction unfolded in stages over the course of more than 100 days, with universities like Al-Israa in southern Gaza being transformed into military barracks before being totally obliterated.
