Photos: Gaza’s children return to class in tents and ruins

Gaza children return to classrooms after three years, facing challenges of damaged schools, tents, and scarce supplies.Palestinian students attend their first day of the new school year inside a tent classroom at a school in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]By Al Jazeera, AP and ReutersPublished On 21 Sep 202621 Sep 2026Hundreds of thousands of children returned to in-person classes in Gaza on Saturday for the first time in nearly three years, filing into damaged school buildings, makeshift classrooms and tents amid a severe shortage of basic supplies.The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 98 percent of schools in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or damaged during Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave, while local education officials estimate about 660,000 students have been deprived of regular, in-person learning.The reopening is a fragile milestone in a territory where about 22,000 students and more than 770 education workers, including 532 teachers, have been killed, according to Ibrahim Ramadan, director of education for eastern Khan Younis.“The last time I have been to school was three years ago,” said student Moayed Abu Mustafa in Khan You...