Bombed-out Gaza university becomes shelter for displaced Palestinians

One of the Strip’s largest universities, the Islamic University of Gaza in Gaza City had about 17,000 students before the war, studying everything from medicine and chemistry to literature and commerce. More than 60 percent of the students were women.

But now, any sense that the place was once a university is gone.

After 18 months of Israeli bombardment that killed more than 50,000 people in the enclave, the main auditorium is a gutted, burned-out wreck. Giant holes have been blasted through its blackened walls. The banks of seats are mangled and twisted.

The campus has become a refuge for hundreds of families in northern Gaza since Israel broke a ceasefire on March 18 and relaunched the war.

Families have set up tents in lecture halls and classrooms. They take books from the library and burn them in cooking fires because they have no fuel. Children run around in gardens reduced to fields of debris and mounds of earth.

A makeshift market has been set up under the archway of the main gate.

Their struggle to survive has worsened because Israel has cut off the entry of food, fuel, medicine and all other goods into Gaza for more than a month, straining the limited supplies of aid agencies on which nearly the entire population relies.