Three university staff were killed when Israeli strikes hit the Islamic University of Gaza in Gaza City for the second time in a few hours on Sunday, while students were on campus for classes — seven Palestinians were killed across the territory that day. An earlier drone strike on the same campus injured seven female students, one of them seriously, Al Jazeera reported. Al Shifa hospital said it received three bodies and treated eight people wounded in the university strike, AFP reported. Two sources at the university told AFP the dead were administrative staff; Al Jazeera reported they were security guards. Both descriptions are published here as reported, unreconciled.
What happened at the Islamic University on Sunday?
The campus was struck twice within a few hours. In the earlier drone strike, seven female students were injured by flying shrapnel, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud reported from the scene; one was seriously injured and transferred to a nearby field hospital. Mahmoud said the Al Jazeera team had been filming on site and had greeted the three men shortly before the second strike killed them. Gaza's education ministry said the students had been present for classes, AFP reported. The university has suspended teaching and administration at its Gaza City campus, where displaced families whose homes were destroyed have also been sheltering, according to reporting summarised on Sunday.
Who were the three killed, and what has Israel said?
The dead were university staff — that much both outlets agree on; their roles are described differently. AFP's two university sources called them administrative staff and said the injured were students. Al Jazeera called them security guards. Asked by AFP, the Israeli military initially said it was looking into the reports. In a later statement reported on Sunday, the military said it had been targeting a Hamas military-wing operative, that it diverted a munition after spotting uninvolved individuals, and that the strike is under review. It named no target and did not say the three staff were its intended target. No evidence for the operative claim was published in the reporting opened for this article.
How many were killed across Gaza on Sunday?
Seven Palestinians were killed in total on Sunday, AFP and Al Jazeera reported. Beyond the university, Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said two people were killed in an airstrike in Khan Yunis in the south, one in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, and one in the north of the Strip, AFP reported. Al Jazeera, citing the Nasser Medical Complex, put the southern deaths in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, where several others, including a child, were wounded; it reported the Deir al Balah killing as a drone strike east of the city and the northern killing on al-Rashid Street, near Hamad Hospital, citing the Palestinian WAFA news agency. The killings came under a truce that has been in effect for over a year without fully halting the violence: Gaza's health ministry puts the number killed since the October 2025 ceasefire at 1,551, and the total since October 2023 at 74,544, Al Jazeera reported.
What does this mean for Gaza's universities?
Sunday's strikes landed on a higher-education sector that is already close to erased. Gaza's education ministry said 95 percent of the buildings belonging to academic institutions have been damaged in the war, and that in the six days before Sunday, 10 students and educators were killed by Israeli fire, AFP reported. UNESCO puts the share of Gaza's higher-education campuses destroyed or damaged since October 2023 at nearly 95 percent, Al Jazeera reported. Mahmoud noted that most of the Islamic University's buildings were already destroyed before Sunday, with only a couple partially standing, and called the strike a reminder that security is out of reach even where students are supposed to be learning. A university struck twice in one teaching day — its staff dead, its students carried to Al Shifa — is the ceasefire's reality stated plainly: classes had resumed in the ruins, and the ruins were bombed again.
This report is drawn from AFP's October 25, 2026 report, opened and read in full via The Good Morning News carrier, and Al Jazeera's October 25, 2026 report, opened and read in full via the verbatim carrier newsline24.online, with the Israeli military's later statement as reported on Sunday and read via search summaries. The identity of the three men killed at the university is published unreconciled — administrative staff per AFP's university sources, security guards per Al Jazeera — because neither outlet's account was confirmed over the other in the sources opened. Casualty figures are attributed to the hospitals, officials and agencies each outlet cited.
