The Gaza war began on 7 October 2023. By April 2024, United Nations human rights experts said Israel had killed almost 6,300 students, 300 teachers and over 100 university professors.
The Palestinian Education Ministry later documented 20,748 students and 1,058 education and administrative staff members killed by the time it released its figures. Its Gaza breakdown listed 19,189 school students and 1,386 university students among those killed. It recorded 28,586 school students and 3,082 university students wounded. The ministry’s figures also listed 805 school education and administrative staff members and 246 university personnel killed.
By July 2026, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that Israeli forces had killed 20,051 students in Gaza. It also documented more than 830 teachers and educational staff killed, alongside over 194 scholars, academics and researchers. The differing totals are reported by separate bodies and at different points in the war.
The damage has extended across the places where learning takes place. All twelve universities in Gaza, including the Islamic University of Gaza, have been bombed by Israeli forces. UNICEF said nearly 98% of Gaza’s school buildings had been damaged. As of April, 165 educational institutions had been completely destroyed and 392 damaged.
More than 93% of school buildings require major rehabilitation or full reconstruction. In October 2025, OCHA reported that nearly 92 per cent of schools would require full reconstruction or major rehabilitation before they could function again.
The loss of buildings has run alongside a long absence from classrooms. Some 700,000 children have missed nearly three years of formal, in-person schooling. OCHA said approximately 200,000 children in Gaza remained without access to structured education. UNICEF said almost all of Gaza’s 1.2 million children needed mental health and psychosocial support.
A UNESCO-backed assessment published in November 2025 found that 22 of 38 university campuses had been completely destroyed and 14 damaged, affecting 95% of the campuses assessed. It put infrastructure damage at higher education institutions at $373.25 million, while preliminary estimates put direct education sector losses at approximately $4 billion.
The bombing of universities also destroyed libraries, cultural centres and archives containing rare records of the forced expulsion and displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba. Professor Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian scholar, coined the term ‘scholasticide’ to describe the systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system.
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