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NUSEIRAT: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, announced this week that following the start of the ceasefire Gaza, it was reopening some schools in the territory, with children gradually returning to classes.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X on Tuesday that more than 25,000 schoolchildren had already joined the agency’s “temporary learning spaces,” while some 300,000 would follow online classes.

At Al-Hassaina school in western Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, classes had just resumed despite a shortage of classrooms.

Warda Radwan, an 11-year-old student, said she was looking forward to returning to her learning routine.

“I am in sixth grade now, but I lost two years of schooling because of displacement and the war,” she said.

During the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, Al-Hassaina, like many other UNRWA facilities throughout the territory, became a shelter for dozens of displaced families.

Their presence was still visible in the lines of laundry strung across the building’s three floors.

Radwan explained that classes “are restarting slowly” as the school is emptied of the families living there.

Then, she said, she and her classmates “can continue learning like we did before.”

In the school’s courtyard on Saturday, young girls lined up for the morning assembly, performing stretching exercises under their teachers’ supervision and chanting: “Long live Palestine!“

As classes began, about 50 girls crammed into a single classroom, sitting on the floor with no desks or chairs.

They responded enthusiastically to the teacher’s questions and eagerly copied the lesson from the blackboard into their notebooks, happy to be back in school after two years.

Another classroom hosted a similar number of older girls in their teens. 

The conditions were identical — all sitting on the floor with notebooks resting on their laps.

Jenin Abu Jarad, a relative of one of the students, said she was thankful to see the children back in classes.

“Since Oct. 7, there has not been any school for our children,” she said.

“During this time, all they could do was fetch water, get food, or play in the streets. But thankfully, about a week to ten days ago, schools began reopening gradually,” she added.

DAMASCUS: A Syrian government-led committee has found that most allegations of kidnapping of women from the Alawite religious minority were false, the findings of the monthslong probe released on Sunday show.

Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Noureddine Al-Baba announced the outcome of the inquiry into 42 allegations of violence against women and girls during the violence in March along Syria’s coastal provinces.

Al-Baba said the committee, which was set up in July, spoke to affected women and girls and concluded that only one case was a kidnapping.

“In the one confirmed kidnapping case, the girl was safely returned after security agencies investigated the matter,” Al-Baba told a news conference. 

“The search continues to identify the perpetrators.”

President Ahmad Al-Sharaa’s government has been trying to bring back calm and economic recovery to the war-torn country.

“We urge citizens, civil society, and human rights organizations to first report any such incidents or suspicions to the Interior Ministry,” Al-Baba said.

The Syrian inquiry concluded that of the remaining 41 cases it examined, 12 involved women fleeing with romantic partners, nine were “temporary absences” with relatives or friends, six were instances of fleeing domestic violence, six were false allegations on social media, four were victims of extortion or prostitution, and four were perpetrators of criminal offenses who security agencies apprehended.

The violence began after armed groups aligned with former Syrian President Bashar Assad attacked government security forces. 

The counterinsurgency spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks and massacres that killed hundreds of civilians.

Amnesty International said in July it had received credible reports of several dozen women and girls being kidnapped across the provinces of Latakia, Tartus, Homs, and Hama.