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UNRWA schools in Gaza provide refuge for displaced families

The Gaza Strip's many schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency sheltered many Palestinians who lost their houses during the fighting.

THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images
A child in the Abu Ghadyan family writes on the blackboard as a relative looks on in a classroom of a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees where they are living temporarily after their home was damaged during the recent Israeli bombing in Gaza City, on May 29, 2021. — THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images

Mithqal Salama al-Sarsawi and his family are living in a classroom in one of the Gaza Strip's UNRWA schools after their house was bombed by Israel for a fourth time in the latest 11-day conflict.

Sarsawi, who is from the Turkmen area of the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujaiya, told Al-Monitor that he and his family have taken refuge in the schools during every war and military confrontation in the Gaza Strip. Their house, which close to the eastern border of the besieged enclave, was destroyed four times over the course of 12 years, during the Israeli wars on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014 and in the most recent round of fighting in May.

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