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Deep in the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, 15-month-old Zaid Nofal lay sleeping in the sweltering pre-dawn darkness of a Gaza summer. Without a blanket to combat the oppressive heat, the toddler had been left by an open window to catch what little breeze stirred the humid air at 3 a.m. That quiet, ordinary moment was shattered in an instant when an Israeli airstrike slammed into the family’s home, burying Zaid beneath the crumbled concrete of what had just been a place of refuge.

Just meters from the collapsed rubble, Zaid’s 38-year-old mother Fatima Nofal stood frozen in disbelief, her clothes stained with blood and dust as neighbors screamed around her. For the Palestinian mother, this was not an entirely new horror. Zaid was the fourth son she had lost to Israeli violence, three older boys having been killed in a separate attack just two years prior. This home, partially destroyed in earlier conflict, had only just been rebuilt after a ceasefire was announced in October 2025.

“I still haven’t processed what happened. I remain in a state of profound shock,” Nofal told Middle East Eye in an interview from hospital, where she is recovering from burns to her feet. “All I remember is waking up just minutes before the strike. I moved to another spot because of the severe heat, leaving my little Zaid by the window so the breeze could help him sleep.”

Wounded in the blast, Nofal refused to evacuate before rescuers found her son. Neighbors poured in to help, slowly shifting piles of concrete and debris to reach the trapped toddler. When they finally pulled Zaid out, wrapped in a thin blanket, he was already dead. The attack reopened old wounds that had barely begun to scab over: the trauma of October 13, 2023, when an earlier Israeli airstrike took the lives of her three other sons.

That strike came early in the war that has ravaged Gaza since October 2023. Back then, Nofal and her family had fled their original home in al-Bureij, convinced they would find safety in the al-Sawarha area of the coastal town al-Zawaida, far from the border. “We realised the gravity of the situation and decided to flee because we thought it would be safer than staying near the border,” she recalled. “But we never imagined that the place we went to for safety would become where I’d witness the killing of my three sons and most of my husband’s family.”

That attack killed 16-year-old Amin, 11-year-old Hamza, and Ahmed, her newborn son who was just 22 days old. Nofal and her two young daughters were wounded, their home destroyed, forcing them into the cycle of repeated displacement that has defined life for nearly every Palestinian in Gaza over the past two years.

Ten months after she buried her three older boys, a glimmer of hope cut through the darkness: Nofal discovered she was pregnant. When she learned she was carrying another boy, her quiet hope grew into profound joy. Zaid was born on April 16, 2025, born into a war that never ended, but for his family he was more than a baby — he was a chance to fill the gaping hole left by the children they had lost.

“Zaid’s birth was the most significant event in our lives during the war,” Nofal said. “His arrival brought immense joy to the whole family; everyone celebrated him as a small miracle that came to light up our lives after long months and nights of pain and tears.” When relatives suggested naming him after one of his late brothers, Nofal refused. “I wanted him to have his own name and his own destiny,” she explained.

In the 15 months of his short life, Zaid became the beating heart of the home. His two sisters adored him, never wanting to be apart. “Whenever I took him to the clinic for vaccinations or check-ups, his sisters would wait for him on the stairs. They could not bear being away from him, even for a few hours,” Nofal said.

The latest airstrike that killed Zaid also left Nofal’s family fractured once more. Her eldest daughter Baraa suffered minor injuries, but 15-month-old Lina, her youngest daughter, is still hospitalized with head trauma. “When I visited her, the first thing she asked about was Zaid. I could not bring myself to tell her the truth while she was still wounded. I told her he was fine and waiting for her,” Nofal said, her voice heavy with unspoken grief. “I don’t know how I will tell her the truth when she is discharged.”

Nofal’s grief is compounded by the stolen childhood Zaid never got to live. “On the day he was killed, he was restless in the afternoon and wanted to go outside. I told his sisters how much I wished I could take him out, but there are no places left for children to play,” she said. “He spent his whole life indoors. Even his cousins had been killed in Israeli air strikes, so he had no one to play with.”

Zaid’s death is far from an isolated tragedy. Despite a ceasefire agreement reached in October 2025 that was meant to end the two-year war in Gaza, Israel has continued to carry out near-daily airstrikes across the besieged enclave. Official counts put the death toll from Israeli strikes at more than 1,200 people since the ceasefire took effect 10 months ago, with a total of more than 73,000 Palestinians killed since the war began in October 2023.

Children have borne the brunt of this ongoing violence. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported in June that roughly 260 children have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire began — an average of one child killed every day. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder called the situation a “cruel and deadly illusion of a ceasefire.”

On the same day Zaid was killed, another child lost her life in a separate Israeli strike: nine-year-old Ratil al-Abadla died when a bomb hit her uncle’s tent in al-Mawasi, where she had traveled just two days earlier for a brief break from the horrors of war. A video of her father, Abdullah al-Abadla, holding her small body and asking what his daughter had done to deserve such a fate spread rapidly across social media, a searing reminder of the pain shared by thousands of Gaza families.

The United Nations’ independent commission of inquiry has already confirmed it found clear evidence that Israeli forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, noting that these actions form part of the pattern of conduct that led the commission to conclude Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza.

For Nofal, however, no official report or global condemnation can bring back her four sons. As she divides her time between recovering from her own injuries and sitting by her injured daughter’s hospital bed, she now faces two new overwhelming struggles: finding a new place to call home after her house was destroyed once more, and finding the words to tell Lina that her baby brother will never come home.

“Israel is intent on killing us, and it needs no justification to do so,” Nofal said. “The fire is burning in my chest, and I do not know who will extinguish it.”

On Saturday, Japanese emergency authorities concluded a five-day large-scale search-and-rescue mission at the site of a collapsed regional shopping mall in Kumamoto Prefecture, four days after a powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu, leaving at least 34 people dead across the affected region. The Aeon Mall in the town of Kashima was counted among the disaster’s most heavily damaged locations: a post-quake explosion, which mall operator Aeon suspects was triggered by a gas leak, caused the structure’s second floor and multiple exterior walls to collapse. In the immediate aftermath of the tremor, roughly 3,000 visiting shoppers were safely evacuated to an adjacent parking lot, but a number of staff members remained inside the building to secure the facility, leaving them trapped when the structure gave way.

Over the course of the five-day operation, rescue teams pulled five survivors from the tangled rubble of the mall and recovered the remains of seven employees who did not survive the collapse. With all unaccounted-for people at the site now identified and located, officials called off active search efforts at the mall on Saturday. However, search operations across the wider Kumamoto Prefecture remain ongoing, as the total number of missing people across the region has not yet been confirmed. More than 5,000 personnel, including Japan Self-Defense Force troops, local police officers, specialized rescue workers and canine search teams, have been deployed to the affected area to continue looking for survivors.

At a separate high-impact site in Yatsushiro City, a large industrial chimney at the Nippon Paper Industries factory collapsed during the quake, trapping 11 on-site workers. Local officials confirmed Saturday that nine of those trapped workers have been found dead, while the remaining two were rescued and are receiving medical care. Across Kumamoto Prefecture, the earthquake has left 103 people with documented injuries, and authorities are currently investigating whether two additional deaths can be linked to the seismic event.

In addition to the human toll and structural damage, the prefecture is now facing a growing public health crisis driven by two overlapping crises: widespread disruptions to critical infrastructure and a record-breaking heatwave. As of Saturday, nearly 70,000 households across Kumamoto remain without access to clean potable water, and supplies of vehicle and generator fuel are running critically low, even as temperatures in Kumamoto City hit an extreme 36.6 degrees Celsius (97.8 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday. The sweltering conditions have raised urgent concerns about heat exhaustion and other heat-related illnesses among displaced residents.

More than 9,000 people are currently staying in overcrowded emergency evacuation shelters, which have been set up in repurposed community centers, school gymnasiums and public school classrooms. Many other displaced residents have chosen to sleep in their vehicles parked at municipal parking lots and public parks, or camp outside their damaged homes, in order to access greater privacy than crowded shelters can offer.

Longstanding criticism from disaster response experts has highlighted the dangers of overcrowded shelter conditions in Japan, noting that insufficient sanitation and a lack of personal space increase psychological stress for survivors and raise the risk of secondary public health outbreaks after a disaster. In response to these ongoing challenges, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reaffirmed the national government’s commitment to supporting response and recovery efforts during a Saturday meeting of the government’s disaster task force, urging rescue teams to leave no one unaccounted for across the affected region.

Takaichi added that relief supplies including bottled water, non-perishable food, portable toilets, mobile air conditioning units and privacy partitions are already being distributed to evacuation centers across the prefecture to improve living conditions for displaced residents. “The government is determined to do everything we can to support affected communities,” she stated.

As of Saturday, Kumamoto Prefecture has recorded more than 1,500 reports of power outages across the region, though the local Kyushu Electric Power Company said it had no immediate confirmation of widespread ongoing outages. Preliminary structural assessments from the Kumamoto prefectural government confirm that at least 180 homes have been completely destroyed by the quake, and nearly 3,500 additional buildings have sustained damage — a figure that has nearly doubled since Friday’s update — with 20 of those structures classified as severely damaged.

For generations of Palestinian students, the General Secondary Education Certificate exam – widely known as Tawjihi – stands as a defining milestone. Traditionally, it brings closure to 12 years of schooling, opens the door to university, and is marked by joyous celebrations of hard-won achievement and hopeful plans for the future. But nearly three years into Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, this pivotal academic moment carries a drastically different weight for thousands of young Gazans. For these students, just surviving long enough to sit the exams and receive their results has become an extraordinary accomplishment.

One story that has captured widespread attention is that of Saba Rabah, a 2024 Tawjihi graduate who claimed the top score across Palestine’s scientific stream, with a nearly perfect 99.9 percent average. The result fulfilled a childhood dream Rabah had nurtured for years – but the celebratory moment was deeply shadowed by the loss of her father, killed in an Israeli airstrike on the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza earlier this year. The final selfie the pair shared, taken during Eid al-Fitr in April 2024, remains one of Rabah’s most cherished possessions.

From childhood, Rabah’s parents pushed her to excel academically and supported her ambition to attend medical school. “In my last conversation with my father, he told me he dreamed I would rank among the top students in the scientific stream and study medicine, just as I had always hoped,” Rabah told Middle East Eye. “He said he wanted to spend his retirement in my future clinic.”

Rabah’s path to the top score was littered with obstacles no student should ever face. Like thousands of Tawjihi candidates across Gaza, she pursued her studies in conditions that turned the most basic educational tasks into daily battles for survival. Just days before her final exams, an Israeli strike damaged her family’s rented displacement shelter, leaving only one room intact. That small space served as kitchen, bedroom, living area, and study space all at once.

“No words can describe the suffering of studying while starving or while fleeing,” Rabah said. She recalled repeated episodes of displacement, where she was forced to choose between carrying her textbooks, her mother’s life-saving heart and blood pressure medication, or assisting her 25-year-old quadriplegic brother Saeed. Basic educational supplies have become unattainable luxuries in blockaded Gaza: no new textbooks have entered the territory in three years, making even second-hand copies rare, and a pack of 200 A4 sheets now costs roughly $150, out of reach for most families. Unreliable electricity and spotty internet access have further complicated efforts to study remotely.

Through the hardest moments, Rabah held onto her father’s dream, with her mother and siblings reminding her of what he had wanted for her. “Every family in Gaza has experienced grief. We have lost fathers, mothers, siblings and sometimes entire families,” she said. “We didn’t choose to live through this violence, but we keep trying to live and hold on to the small moments because that is our right. The only solution is for the Israeli war to stop. We don’t want to lose any more of our loved ones. We want to study like everyone else. We want to live in dignity.”

Rabah’s story is far from unique. Thousands of Tawjihi students across Gaza navigated repeated bombardment, displacement, injury, and grief to sit for their exams this year. Among them is Maram Muqit, a northern Gaza student who took her exams just four months after an Israeli bullet became lodged in her spinal cord, leaving her partially paralyzed.

Muqit was injured while walking back to her family’s displacement tent from a math class, her mother Naheel explained. “Doctors told us she might never walk again if she remains in Gaza because of the lack of medical supplies,” Naheel said. Before she was wounded, Muqit had attended two makeshift schools, despite the constant danger of traveling across northern Gaza. Her parents begged her to stay home for safety, but she refused to miss any chance to learn. When internet was available, she downloaded YouTube lessons and studied materials shared by her teachers on WhatsApp.

Before the current conflict, Muqit and her family lived in Beit Lahia, but their home was destroyed in the first month of Israeli attacks. They have been displaced multiple times since, and now live in a tent in the al-Atatra neighborhood in northern Gaza. Muqit is currently undergoing rehabilitation at al-Wafa Hospital, where she balanced intensive therapy with exam preparation. Despite the exhaustion of balancing treatment and studying, she earned an outstanding 96.6 percent on her Tawjihi exams.

“When the results came out, we cried instead of celebrating. Her father and I tried to help her stand, but she still couldn’t keep her balance,” Naheel said. The hospital later allowed Muqit to spend a day with her family at the displacement camp, where relatives and friends held a small celebration. When she returned to the hospital, staff and fellow patients celebrated her achievement, bringing her small gifts to mark the milestone.

Even with her strong score, Muqit’s future remains uncertain. She has long dreamed of studying dentistry, but fears her injury and disability will block her from pursuing the career she has wanted since childhood. “I am happy I achieved the grades I needed. But I am sad that I may never walk again,” she said. “I hope I can get an electric wheelchair, travel abroad for treatment and go to university.”

For other high-achieving students, the joy of a strong Tawjihi result never came at all. Among the nearly 19,000 Palestinian students killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, per Palestinian Ministry of Education data, is Yahya Nasman. Nasman scored a 96.6 percent on his 2024 Tawjihi exams – but he and five members of his family were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home just one week before results were announced in July.

Two days before the attack, Nasman’s uncle Waleed hosted Yahya and another family member for a small post-exam meal. Waleed said his nephew had spent the year balancing studying with the daily work of helping his family survive the war: fetching clean water, collecting firewood, and securing basic supplies. Over pizza, Yahya spoke confidently about his plans: he was sure he would earn high marks, he told his uncle, and he wanted to study architectural engineering so he could help rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed across Gaza.

Waleed remembered his nephew as the most caring member of the family, always the first to step in to help anyone in need before returning straight to his studies. The day before the strike, Yahya brought his six-year-old sister Arwa to play with Waleed’s daughters – a meeting Waleed never imagined would be their last. The next day, 12-year-old Ayham, Yahya’s brother, returned to the family home to find it reduced to rubble. He ran to alert relatives, who rushed to the site hoping to find survivors.

“My brother, his wife and their three children, including Yahya, were killed instantly,” Waleed said. “The force of the explosion threw parts of their bodies hundreds of metres down the street. I collected the remains of my nephews and nieces from the road and the displacement camps before burying them.” Five days after the attack, the family learned Yahya had earned one of the highest Tawjihi scores in Gaza. What should have been a joyous celebration became one more moment of grief. “Yahya was one of thousands of students who tried to build a future despite everything happening around them,” Waleed said. “We want people around the world to help stop the attacks on Gaza. Every day more people are killed.”

Official data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education underscores the catastrophic toll the conflict has taken on Gaza’s education sector. Since October 2023, Israeli forces have wounded at least 28,293 students, killed nearly 19,000 students and roughly 800 teachers and education workers, and damaged or destroyed 279 schools, leaving Gaza’s entire education system in ruins. Even after a tentative ceasefire agreement was reached in October, Israel has continued near-daily airstrikes across the strip, killing at least 1,200 people since the truce took effect. Total Palestinian fatalities from Israeli attacks since October 2023 now exceed 73,000, according to local officials.