The new school year in the Palestinian territories officially began Monday but all schools in Gaza shut after 11 months of war has raised fears of a "lost generation."
In its ongoing genocidal war on the Palestinian territory, Israel announced new orders to residents of the north Gaza Strip to leave their homes, in response to rockets fired into Israel.
Umm Zaki's son Moataz, 15, was supposed to begin 10th grade. Instead, he woke up in their tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and was sent to fetch a container of water from more than a kilometer away.
"Usually, such a day would be a day of celebration, seeing the children in the new uniform, going to school, and dreaming of becoming doctors and engineers. Today all we hope is that the war ends before we lose any of them," the mother of five told Reuters by text message.
The Palestinian Education Ministry said all Gaza schools were shut and 90% of them had been destroyed or damaged in Israel's brutal attack on the territory, launched after the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion.
The U.N. Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which runs around half of Gaza's schools, has turned as many of them as it can into emergency shelters housing thousands of displaced families.
"The longer the children stay out of school the more difficult it is for them to catch up on their lost learning and the more prone they are to becoming a lost generation, falling prey to exploitation including child marriage, child labor and recruitment into armed groups," UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma told Reuters.
In addition to the 625,000 Gazans already registered for school who would be missing classes, another 58,000 six-year-olds should have registered to start first grade this year, the Education Ministry said.
Last month, UNRWA launched a back-to-learning program in 45 of its shelters, with teachers setting up games, drama, arts, music and sports activities to help with children's mental health.
Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes at least once, and some have had to flee as many as 10 times.
In the latest evacuation order, Israel told residents of an area in the northern Gaza Strip they must leave their homes, following the firing of rockets into southern Israel the previous day.
"To all those in the specified area. Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying out terrorist acts from this area. The specified area has been warned many times in the past. The specified area is considered a dangerous combat zone," an Israeli military spokesperson said in Arabic on X.
The United Nations urged Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to attend medical facilities to get children under the age of 10 years old vaccinated against polio. Limited pauses in fighting have been held to allow the vaccination campaign, which aims to reach 640,000 children in Gaza after the territory's first polio case in around 25 years.
U.N. officials said the campaign in the southern and central Gaza Strip had so far reached more than half of the children there needing the drops. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.
Health officials said Monday two separate Israeli airstrikes had killed seven people in central Gaza, while another strike killed one man in Khan Younis further south.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said they clashed with Israeli forces in several areas across the Gaza Strip with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire.
The Israeli military said forces continued to dismantle military infrastructure and killed dozens of resistance group members in the past days, including senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders.
The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion which caused 1,200 deaths and took about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, in comparison, has killed more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the enclave's Health Ministry.