News Digest

Post-war counseling awaits Gaza children going back to school

Some 500,000 children returned to school in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, where many will be given psychological counseling before regular studies begin after a devastating 50-day war between Palestinian militants and Israel. The opening of the school year had been delayed for three weeks because of damage to more than 250 schools and the use of about 90 United Nations educational facilities as shelters for tens of thousands of residents displaced by fighting, the U.N. and local authorities said.

The top priority now is making sure that after a period of psychosocial support, including the use of theater for development techniques, our students can return to their regular curricula.

Pierre Krähenbühl, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs more than 200 Gaza schools

Krähenbühl said UNRWA has employed over 200 counselors who would engage with the approximately 240,000 students in its schools, with a transition to standard studies scheduled in a week. A coalition of international and local non-government agencies and the Palestinian Education Ministry will also help provide psychosocial support to another quarter-million students in Gaza’s public schools. Health officials in the Gaza Strip, an enclave run by the Hamas Islamist group, said 500 children were killed in the war. Zeyad Thabet, Gaza’s deputy education minister, said 26 schools in the territory were destroyed during the war.