AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Lebanese authorities have announced a delay in the start of the school year due to the escalating Israeli attacks, which have killed hundreds and displaced more than a million people across Lebanon.
Lebanese Education Minister Abbas Halabi announced on Sunday that the start of the new school year has been delayed until Nov. 4, 2024.
Halabi said the new start date applies to public schools, secondary institutions, and technical colleges.
He emphasized that security risks and the psychological impact of the ongoing Israeli aggression have made it difficult for families to send their children to school at this time.
The decision follows intense Israeli bombardment across Lebanon, which has displaced over a million people, many of whom are now sheltering in schools.
An education ministry official said Israeli strikes have displaced some 40 percent of Lebanon’s 1.2 million pupils from their homes.
As half the country’s 1,200 public schools have been turned into makeshift bedrooms for those forced out of their homes, the ministry has postponed the start of the school year from October 1 to November 4.
But the 14-year-old Ali al-Akbar’s mother isn’t convinced they will be able to reopen by then.
“No mother wants her child to miss out on school, but this year I’d rather he stayed by my side as nowhere in Lebanon is safe anymore,” 37-year-old Batoul Arouni said from inside a classroom-turned-shelter in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Lebanon postponed the start of the school year after Israel increased its air strikes across the country on September 23.
The escalation has killed hundreds of people and pushed upwards of a million people to flee their homes.
The Israeli military is pushing ahead with its attacks on Lebanon. Lebanese health officials condemn the regime’s indiscriminate strikes that are killing civilians and rescue workers.
Israeli fighter jets conducted a series of airstrikes on a number of locations in and near the Lebanese capital Beirut Sunday morning. One of them left a huge plume of smoke over a large area of the city.
The attacks killed about two dozen people on Saturday.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry says over 2,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since last October, most of them in the recent spate of airstrikes.
The United Nations' refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on Sunday that many strikes on Lebanon had violated international humanitarian law, in apparent reference to Israel's bombardment of large parts of the country.
“Unfortunately, many instances of violations of international humanitarian law in the way the air strikes are conducted that have destroyed or damaged civilian infrastructure, have killed civilians, have impacted humanitarian operations,” Filippo Grandi told media in Beirut.
During his visit to Beirut, Grandi also said Lebanon is seeing a “major displacement crisis” as a result of Israel’s escalating bombing campaign.
Tens of thousands held rallies across the globe to condemn the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and Lebanon on the eve of the first anniversary of the regime’s war on Gaza.
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