The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) estimated on Tuesday that Israel, the occupying power, has been killing every day since October 7, 2023, the equivalent of “an entire school class of children,” with the number of students in a class ranging between 35 and 45.
“Every day since the beginning of the war in Gaza, an average of an entire school class of children has been killed,” UNRWA’s Director of Operations in Gaza, Sam Rose, said in a statement.
Before the outbreak of the genocide, which transformed most UNRWA schools into centers for sheltering displaced persons, the number of students in a class ranged between 35 and 45, depending on the overcrowding in the schools .
Children have paid a heavy price for the genocide Israel has been perpetrating for more than 21 months, during which more than 18,000 children have been killed, with approximately 16,854 of them hospitalized, according to medical sources.
Children in the Gaza Strip also live a bitter reality due to the repeated waves of displacement, in addition to hunger and thirst resulting from the occupation’s policy of destroying food and water sources and closing the crossings .
On July 8, UNRWA said, “Children in Gaza constitute half of the population of 2.4 million, and their lives are marked by war and destruction.”
The war on Gaza left more than 197,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands of displaced people and a famine that claimed the lives of many, including dozens of children .
