On the start of the school year, the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary General António Guterres, Stéphane Dujarric granted that over 600,000 children in the Gaza Strip had remained out of classrooms during the school year’s second term.

A total of 200 schools sponsored by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) remain out of service and many of them have become shelters for displaced Gazians after the conflict broke out on October 7, 2023.

As part of relief efforts, UNRWA teams are providing recreational activities and psychosocial support in some of its facilities.

The spokesperson further warned that such disease outbreaks as polio virus pose a huge threat for children in the territory.

He confirmed that over 256 infants had been immunized in the towns of Khan Younis and Rafah, south of the enclave, during the second phase of the campaign led by UN agencies.

The initial round of the campaign is now nearly 70 percent complete, with over 446,000 vaccinated out of 640,000 targeted, Dujarric said.

However, he alerted that the new evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army for Northern areas includes regions where truce to hostilities had been agreed to facilitate polio vaccination.

According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the new orders of population displacement further deepens the humanitarian crisis for hundreds of thousands of people.

Over 55 evacuation orders remain in effect in Gaza, covering up to 86 percent of the territory.

Ied/omr/arc/ebr