Gaza · Children under fire
Gaza's children went back to school. Now they are being killed on the way there
Classes resumed on 19 September. Since then, Israeli strikes and sniper fire have killed pupils on the road home, at assembly and near the shifting Yellow Line.
Mohammed Hamad was 14, an eighth-grader near the top of his class. On 17 October he finished lessons at a makeshift school in Deir el-Balah and set off home through the al-Baraka neighbourhood with his 10-year-old brother, Abdullah. An Israeli strike hit the road they were walking along. Mohammed was killed, along with a man nearby. Abdullah survived.
"He was not just my son, he was my friend," his father, Riyad Hamad, 44, said from the family's tent in Deir el-Balah. "He was doing so well."
A year into a ceasefire, Gaza's children have gone back to school, and they are being killed on the way there.
Back to class, back under fire
The academic year resumed in Gaza on 19 September, after nearly three years of disruption caused by the war. Israeli strikes and sniper fire have continued regardless.
According to Gaza's Ministry of Education:
- 10 children aged six to 16, and a teacher, were killed between 18 and 24 October
- two girls were wounded during morning assembly at Muradiya School in Jabalia on 21 October
- five students were injured, some critically, in an attack on the Islamic University campus in Gaza City last Sunday
The ministry has called for urgent international action to protect students, schools and universities.
Since the ceasefire took effect in October 2025, Israel has killed at least 1,574 Palestinians in Gaza and injured 5,687, according to the enclave's Ministry of Health.
The Yellow Line
The danger is greatest near the so-called Yellow Line, which divided Gaza between Israeli and Palestinian control under the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. According to the United Nations, the line has since moved westward, giving Israel control of more than 65 per cent of Gaza, up from the 53 per cent agreed a year ago.
At least 66 Palestinian children have been killed close to the line. Pupils and teachers who travel near it remain in danger from snipers and bombs.
On 21 October, Suad Abd Rabbo, a fourth-grader, left for school with her bag and books. Soon afterwards her older sister ran home shouting that Suad had been shot. "I ran out barefoot," her mother, Aliaa Abd Rabbo, recalled. "She was bleeding, crying and screaming."
A family's fear
For the Hamads, the walk to school is now something to dread. Abdullah, who walked there and back with his brother every day, is afraid to go alone, and afraid of losing his father too.
"We are living in fear," Riyad Hamad said. "Even when I am walking or sitting in a car, my heart is filled with fear."
"The child is supposed to bury his father, not the father bury his child," he said. "They have turned the order of things upside down."
Raisina Wire analysis
A ceasefire is measured by whether children can walk to school and come home. On that test, Gaza's has failed: classrooms reopened in September, and within weeks pupils were being killed on the road, at assembly and on a university campus.
The shifting Yellow Line matters as much as the strikes themselves. Each westward move puts more homes, tents and makeshift schools within range, and turns a daily walk into a risk that families must weigh every morning.
For India, which has long backed a negotiated two-state outcome and sends humanitarian aid to Gaza, the lesson is that a ceasefire on paper is not the same as protection on the ground. Unless the line is fixed and schools are made safe, a generation that has already lost nearly three years of learning will keep losing more.