GAZA, (PIC)
In a morning that did not complete, the child Retaj Rehan, aged nine, became a martyr inside her educational tent in the north of the Gaza Strip, while she was holding her notebook and pen and preparing to receive a new lesson.
Retaj was not in a battlefield, but in an alternative classroom established over the ruins of a destroyed school, before the bullets of the Israeli occupation army pierced the moment of childhood and ended her life on the study bench, on Thursday morning (9/10/2026).
A lesson not completed
Inside what remains of the “Abu Ubaida bin al-Jarrah” school, where the classrooms turned into tents, Retaj sat in the third basic grade, trying to follow her lessons amidst a reality buzzing with destruction, however that moment of learning did not complete.
During the school hours, the sound of gunfire echoed, soon followed by screaming inside the tents. The director of the educational point, Muhammad al-Attar, narrates the details of the moment saying that the educational staff rushed to find out what happened, to find Retaj lying on the ground inside the classroom, directly hit. The child was moved to the nearest medical center, but she passed away succumbing to her wounds.
Green zone
According to the statements of the educational administration, the school is located in an area classified as “green”, and is about three kilometers away from the border areas classified as dangerous.
The occupation army’s killing of the child Retaj is part of a series of incidents that affected children in the Gaza Strip, in light of the ongoing war conditions, where educational institutions, even the temporary ones, are no longer safe from targeting.
The father of the child expressed his shock saying that his daughter “did not carry anything but a notebook and a pen.”, questioning any justification that could permit the killing of a child inside a classroom, describing what happened as a flagrant violation of all international norms.
Education: Horrific crime
For its part, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education condemned the incident, considering it a horrific crime, and holding Israel fully responsible for it, and demanding urgent international action to stop the violations against civilians, especially children. It also called for opening independent international investigations to hold those responsible accountable.
According to the Ministry of Health, more than 21,000 Palestinian children have become martyrs and tens of thousands were injured during the war of genocide in the Gaza Strip, in a reality that reflects a rising human cost of the Israeli criminality.
Retaj departed, and her story remained a witness to a repeated crime in the narrative of violated childhood in Gaza; where the road to school, and even the study benches themselves, turn into a space of danger, instead of being a safe haven for learning and life.
