“Four schools have been damaged in the past four days. Since the war began, two-thirds of UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip have been hit, some bombed and many badly damaged. Philip Lazzarini said in a post on X:
The Israeli military said in a statement Tuesday that it had targeted “terrorist infrastructure and terrorist operatives” in Gaza City.
Get shot
On Tuesday, At least 25 people were killed when Israel carried out an airstrike near a school building. According to health authorities in the area, refugees are being accommodated in southern Gaza and eastern Khan Yunis.
On Saturday, another airstrike killed at least 16 people at a UNRWA school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, and a day later, a school in Gaza City where hundreds of people were reportedly staying was hit.
UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma said further Israeli airstrikes were reported on Monday at or near UNRWA’s Nuseirat school. UN News.
There is no safe place
“This is becoming commonplace. In the last four days alone, four schools have been attacked,” she said. Every time a school is attacked, “dozens pay the price.”
The UN agency, the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza, closed all schools when the war broke out on October 7 in response to Hamas-led attacks on several targets in southern Israel that killed about 1,250 people and took more than 250 hostages.
“We converted most of them into shelters, and at one point we had a million people staying at our school,” Ms. Touma explained, adding that “many” of the casualties from the recent school strikes were women and children.
Since the war began, more than half of UNRWA facilities, most of them schools, have been damaged.
“Some of them were completely bombed and are no longer usable,” Ms. Touma said, adding that at least 600,000 children have been forced out of school since the war began.
The Lost Generation
“For UNRWA, most of it has been used as shelters, but that means if this war continues, we risk losing an entire generation of children,” she continued.
“The longer children are out of school, the more difficult it becomes to catch up on educational losses. Not only are they at greater risk of becoming victims of exploitation, including child labor and child marriage, they are also at greater risk of being recruited into armed groups or used in combat. “So, for the sake of those children, we must call a ceasefire.”
In response to claims that the school was being used by Hamas fighters or affiliates, UNRWA officials said no UN facility should be used for military purposes, and the commissioner-general reiterated his call for “an independent investigation and inquiry into all these serious allegations.”
“Civil infrastructure, including schools, shelters, health, clinics and other facilities such as hospitals, must be protected at all times, including in times of conflict,” Ms Tooma said.
Increasing tolls
In this regard, the UNFPA, the UN reproductive health agency, warned that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip continues to worsen and that “severe suffering” is now the norm.
UNFPA cited Gaza health authorities as saying: So far, some 38,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 87,000 injured.Food, shelter, health and livelihood resources are all “critically low.”
Across the region, some 1.9 million people remain uprooted by the conflict, with evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military often repeated.
The UN agency noted that Gaza residents are living “in tents, overcrowded shelters or on the streets without basic necessities” and that there is widespread despair among people “with little prospect of returning home or an end to the conflict”.
Blocking life-saving supplies
A UNFPA situation update said “serious obstacles” to reaching people in need of humanitarian assistance continued to hamper relief efforts, listing “crossing closures and bureaucratic hurdles that impede the delivery of life-saving assistance.”
According to UN agencies, the breakdown in law and order in the Gaza Strip has led to increased theft and violence, putting humanitarian workers and their work at risk.
UNFPA also said doctors were reporting a continued rise in the number of premature and low birth weight babies, which it said were “indicators of severe malnutrition exacerbated by maternal stress and fear”, and highlighted the high risk of gender-based violence (GBV) faced by women and adolescent girls, “especially those who are migrants, widows or unaccompanied”.
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Despite these challenges, UNFPA provided essential sexual and reproductive health and sexual violence services in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
UN agencies and partners have also set up two maternal health facilities for emergency deliveries, provided menstrual hygiene products to thousands of women and girls, supported mobile health points, and deployed sexual and reproductive health teams to shelters.
