Middle East updates: Several killed in Syria airstrikes

All schools remain shut in Gaza as the Palestinian enclave enters a second school year amid war, with children helping their families in the daily struggle to survive.

Humanitarian workers say Gaza's children face long-term damage from being deprived of education.

Younger children suffer in their cognitive, social and emotional development, and older children are at greater risk of being pulled into work or early marriage, said Tess Ingram, regional spokesperson for UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children.

"The longer a child is out of school, the more they are at risk of dropping out permanently and not returning," she said. 

About 625,000 students are registered to study at schools in Gaza, according to the Education Ministry in the Palestinian territory.

The European Union's top diplomat is on a multiday Middle East trip to campaign for a cease-fire, with stops in Egypt and Lebanon but not Israel.

Josep Borrell plans to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo on Monday and will also visit the Rafah border crossing to the Gaza Strip, according to the diplomat's office, adding that a meeting with mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States is "high on the agenda."

On Tuesday, Borrell plans to meet Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and participate in a meeting of the Arab League.

Borrell will be in Lebanon on Wednesday and Thursday. There he will meet with Prime Minister Najib Mikati, parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanese Armed Forces Commander General Joseph Aoun. He will also meet with Lebanon's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Abdallah Bou Habib.

Syrian state media reported on Monday that overnight Israeli strikes had killed at least 14 people in the central Hama province.

"The number of martyrs resulting from the Israeli aggression on a number of sites in the vicinity of Masyaf has risen to 14 martyrs and 43 wounded including six critically," according to Syria's official news agency SANA, citing a medical source.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported "intense Israeli strikes" overnight, giving a higher death toll of "18 people" including eight Syrian fighters. More than 30 others were injured after the strikes, the war monitor stated.

Israeli strikes on Syria since 2011 have mainly targeted army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group with political and military branches.

Israeli medics said three people were shot dead at a West Bank border crossing to Jordan.

Jordan's Interior Ministry identified the man who killed the three as one of its citizens. He was shot dead at the scene.

Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at an Israeli town after an alleged Israeli attack.

Elsewhere, the Qatar Red Crescent and the main UN agency in Gaza (UNRWA) signed an agreement worth $4.5 million (€4.07 million) from a Qatari state development fund to aid more than 4,400 stranded Palestinian workers and patients from Gaza in the occupied West Bank.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday that at least 40,972 people have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The toll includes 33 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said that 94,761 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7.

jsi/kb (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)