At least seven people have died in fresh Israeli air strikes across Gaza City, including three security guards killed during dual raids on the Islamic University campus, international media reported.
Campus Compound Targeted in Dual Raids
According to reports from Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera, Israeli warplanes launched two separate strikes targeting the grounds of the Islamic University of Gaza, one of the enclave's most prominent higher education institutions.
The network reported that three university security personnel were killed instantly in one of the bombardments, which caused extensive structural damage to already compromised administrative and lecture buildings. The facility, which once served tens of thousands of Palestinian students, had previously sustained heavy damage in earlier waves of aerial bombardment.
Israeli military officials have previously maintained that academic facilities and educational institutions across the coastal enclave have been repurposed by Hamas for operational coordination and weapons storage. However, local staff and emergency responders emphasised that the site was largely vacant except for civilian custodial and security workers maintaining what remains of the campus.
Expanding Civilian Toll Across the Strip
The strikes on the university were part of a broader nocturnal assault on several districts of Gaza City that claimed at least four further lives, bringing the immediate casualty count to seven.
Al Jazeera reported that secondary strikes struck residential zones and commercial thoroughfares, leaving multiple civilians wounded and burying survivors beneath heaps of pulverised concrete. Local rescue teams, severely hindered by acute fuel shortages and cratered roads, struggled throughout the night to extract bodies and transport the wounded to the few medical centres still partially functioning in northern Gaza.
With the healthcare system operating under catastrophic conditions, medical personnel across the city reiterated warnings that their capacity to treat severe blast trauma and complex shrapnel injuries has all but evaporated.
Systemic Ruin of Higher Education
The latest destruction underscores the virtual collapse of Gaza's educational infrastructure after months of sustained conflict. United Nations agencies have repeatedly sounded the alarm over the systematic destruction of schools, colleges and research archives across the territory, a development human rights monitors have described as the obliteration of the strip's cultural and intellectual future.
Prior to the war, the Islamic University was a cornerstone of Palestinian intellectual life, hosting medical, engineering and humanities faculties. It now joins a long ledger of tertiary facilities rendered entirely uninhabitable by air raids and ground operations.
Diplomatic Strain Intensifies in Canberra
The mounting death toll among non-combatants and the repeated destruction of civic infrastructure continue to heighten pressure on Western partners, including Australia.
The federal government in Canberra has persistently reiterated its call for an immediate, sustained humanitarian ceasefire, while urging the Israeli government to adhere strictly to international humanitarian law regarding the protection of civilians and civic infrastructure. Australian officials have also committed tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian relief, yet humanitarian agencies argue that aid cannot be effectively deployed while bombardments of this scale persist without respite.
