GAZA (Dispatches) – The 
Palestinian Ministry of Education says 12,799 students have been killed and 20,942 injured since the beginning of the Zionist regime’s aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on October 7, 2023.
The ministry said in a statement that the number of students who were killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the aggression reached more than 12,681, and those who were injured reached 20,311, while in the West Bank 118 students were killed and 631 others were injured, in addition to the arrest of 538, WAFA news agency reported.
It affirmed that 598 teachers and administrators were killed and 3,801 were injured in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and more than 158 were detained in the West Bank.
The ministry pointed out that 425 government schools, universities and their buildings, and 65 affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), were bombed and vandalized in the Gaza Strip.
It also confirmed that 788,000 students in the Gaza Strip are still deprived of attending their schools and universities since the beginning of the aggression, while most students suffer from psychological trauma and face difficult health conditions.
Furthermore, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights decried the Zionist regime’s strikes targeting schools-turned-shelters in Gaza, including a shelter for displaced Palestinians in an area designated as a “safe zone” by the Israeli military.
“At least 69 Palestinians were killed in these attacks including children and women. A mother and her two-day-old newborn daughter are reportedly among the fatalities,” OHCHR said in a statement.
“Almost every Palestinian in the strip has been displaced multiple times in search of safety. But there is no safety and nowhere left to go,” it added.
These attacks have repeatedly resulted in a “distressingly high number of fatalities”, it said.