Gaza Children Return to School; to Undergo Counseling

More than half a million children returned to their schools Sunday in the Gaza Strip, where many will receive psychological counseling before beginning with regular studies.

The devastating 50-day war will surely have had a devastating effect on their fragile minds.

The aim is to make sure that the war - that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians and damaged hundreds of school buildings - does not leave a long-term negative impact on the children's lives.

"The top priority now is making sure that after a period of psychosocial support, including the use of theater for development techniques, our students can return to their regular curricula," said Pierre Krähenbühl, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency - which runs more than 200 Gaza schools.

He further said that UNRWA has around 200 counselors working under it who would be catering to as many as 240,000 students in its schools with their shift to standard studies, which is expected to begin in a week.

An alliance of international and local non-government agencies along with the Palestinian Education Ministry will also help provide psychosocial support to yet another quarter-million students in Gaza's public schools, Reuters reports.

Gaza Education Ministry official Ziad Thabet said that the schools had reopened for 230,000 children, studying in grades 1 to 12, attending public schools; for  around 200,000 who go to United Nations-run schools and thousands who are enrolled in private institutions, the Associated Press states, The Huffington Post reports.

The schools were supposed to reopen three weeks ago, but were delayed due to the damage to the infrastructure of 250 schools and also because 90 U.N. school buildings were being used as temporary shelters by tens of thousands of people displaced by the war. In fact, the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency stated that around 50,000 people are still staying at the U.N. schools.

According to Al Jazeera, the Hamas said that more than 2,100 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the war. Out of the total, 500 were children.