Israeli forces Thursday seized a concrete pump and two mixers used for the transportation of concrete to the construction site of a school facility in Furush Beit Dajan village, east of Nablus, said the school principal.

The principal of Furush Beit Dajan Secondary Co-ed School, Tawfeeq Hajj Muhammad, said that Israeli forces broke into the construction site and seized the concrete pump and two mixers.

Soldiers ordered him to halt the construction until further notice.

Furush Beit Dajan is located in the West Bank’s Area C, under full Israeli administrative and military control, where Israel rarely issues construction permits to Palestinians, forcing many to build without permits to shelter their families.

Meanwhile, Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

Israel has seized hundreds of dunums from Furush Beit Dajan for the construction of Al-Hamra settlement, located to the west of the village, al-Hamra military base and checkpoint as well as the by-pass road No. 57, which connects the Jordan Valley to Nablus city.

The authorities of Syria's Aleppo have restored 130 schools in liberated areas of the city and 340 educational facilities in the eastern part of the Aleppo province, a local official told reporters.

"A total of 130 schools were restored and opened in liberated areas of the city, as well as 340 schools in the eastern part of the province. A total of 1,349 schools are currently open in Aleppo," the official said.

Some school buildings were almost completely destroyed during the war.

"During the war, militants occupied the upper floors of the school building and organized a hospital in the basement. They used classrooms for performing surgeries," director of Aleppo's school Khamid al-Omar said. He added that the building destroyed by militants, was restored in several months.

Engineer Bassam Makhshur, who works on restoring schools, said that the most difficult part is clearing out debris. "The most difficult stage is the first stage - clearing out debris. Works were often halted, as we found mines under every collapsed wall, and we had to call in sappers," he added.

Dozens of students suffocated on Thursday from teargas inhalation after Israeli soldiers fired teargas canisters at them in the town of Abu Dis, east of occupied Jerusalem, a local source told WAFA.

Soldiers broke into the town in the morning hours as students were heading to their schools in an attempt to destroy a memorial built for a young Palestinian who was killed by the Israeli army.

The students threw stones at the soldiers, who responded by firing teargas at them causing a large number of suffocation cases treated on the spot.

The army had previously destroyed the memorial of Mohammad Lafi and warned residents against rebuilding it. The residents, however, rebuilt the memorial immediately after it was destroyed.

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Wednesday besieged Minya Secondary School, east of Bethlehem, in an attempt to break into the school and arrest a student.

Head of the Ministry of Education office in Bethlehem, Sami Mruwa, said that IOF besieged the school and tried to break into the pretext of wanting to arrest a student, but the teaching staff  prevented them from entering by standing at the gate and closing it.

Dozens of citizens gathered in the vicinity of the school upon the attack on the school.

The Teachers Association announced it is suspending a strike on Tuesday after the cabinet promised to meet a demand to exempt teachers from the Civil Service year-end performance review, association president Basel Freihat announced.

The Ministry of Education and the Teachers Association Council held a meeting yesterday evening with caretaker education minister Bassam Talhouni during which they agreed to enhance the partnership between the ministry and the syndicate "in a manner to serve the education process".

Freihat said in a press statement today that agreement was reached on the technical allowance of the education profession practice, in addition to the maximum basic allowance of 100 per cent for a practitioner teacher.

Dr. Ahmad bin Abdullah Humaid Belhoul Al Falasi, UAE Minister of State for Higher Education and Advanced Skills, revealed that 55,179 non-citizen students enrolled in Emirati universities, public and private academic institutions for 2017-2018.

In an interview with the Emirates News Agency (WAM), he explained that business management courses topped the list of specialisations in demand from foreign students, followed by engineering and environmental and health sciences.

Al Falasi pointed out that the UAE occupies the first place internationally in terms of the percentage of foreign students in national higher education institutions, according to a report by the "Global Innovation Index 2018" that was issued by INSEAD in France.

He also highlighted certain statistics on the academic results and future employment of students for 2017, which showed that the UAE was as popular an academic destination as countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand, and surpassed other leading countries, such as Singapore, China and South Korea.

Al Falasi affirmed that the UAE is implementing its vision to invest in its human capital, empower individuals and teach them science and knowledge, to enable them to contribute to the country’s comprehensive sustainable development process.

He added that this vision is based on major pillars, most notably education, and the UAE has developed a comprehensive education system that assists individuals throughout their entire lives.

He addressed the factors that have made the UAE an attractive destination for students from around the world, including the quality of its higher education institutions, their diverse specialisations, the country’s open environment, and its efforts to strengthen the values of tolerance and happiness, which is one of the government’s top priorities.

Dozens of pupils were on Tuesday abducted from a school in Cameroon's restive South-West province by suspected separatists, a Ministry of Communication spokesperson told dpa.

The school's principal and a teacher were also abducted by the gunmen from the Lourdes Bilingual School in the town of Kumba at around midday (1100 GMT), said Ebane Kome Slezor.

"The school gates were closed," Slezor said. "When the kidnappers came over the walls into the campus, some brave students ... climbed up the walls from another side and escaped."

According to reports, the number of pupils led away from the secondary school on foot numbered between 25 and 30. Slezor said she was unable to give an exact number.

Earlier this month, separatists safely returned 79 pupils they had abducted at gunpoint from a Presbyterian school in the country's west.

Cameroon, a former French colony in West Africa, has been troubled by unrest since its two main English-speaking areas, the North-West and South-West regions, announced in 2016 that they wished to secede and form a new country called Ambazonia.

English speakers in Cameroon have long complained of being treated like second-class citizens and getting less government funding.

This year, deadly violence marked by indiscriminate killings and mass displacement has been escalating in the Anglophone regions, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

Over the past months, armed separatists have stabbed and shot military personnel, burned down schools and attacked teachers.

A UNICEF report said on Monday that the majority of Iraqi children are not receiving any assistance from the government, with 80 percent of them having experienced violence at home or in school.

"Children's education needs in Iraq are vast: half of all public schools in the country require rehabilitation and one in three schools run multiple shifts, squeezing children's learning time," the UNICEF report said.

As the first comprehensive survey on the wellbeing of Iraqi children conducted by the UNICEF in seven years, the report pointed to conflict and inequality as the continuing feature of Iraqi children.

Just over half of children from poorer backgrounds complete their primary education, while the gap widens in upper secondary school, where less than a quarter of poor children graduate, the report said.

"The data is the clearest indication yet that the most vulnerable children in Iraq are the ones that are most likely to fall behind," said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF representative in Iraq.

"The hard-won gains to end the conflict in Iraq and transition to a stable future could be lost without additional investments for all children to reach their full potential," Hawkins added.

In addition, only four out of 10 children are fully vaccinated, with the poorest children missing out the most, the report noted.

However, Iraq has made notable progress on newborn and child health, including reducing the number of children who die in their first month of life from 20 deaths per 1,000 live births to 14 since the last survey was conducted in 2011, according to the report carried out under the auspices of Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.

The UNICEF report called on the Iraqi government "to invest in services that benefit children affected by conflict and poverty, and to work towards putting an end to all forms of violence against children."

Christina Lassen, head of the Delegation of the European Union to Lebanon, announced Monday that the EU has allocated 100 million euros (114.54 million U.S. dollars) to offer high-quality education for the Lebanese children and youths, local media reported.

"This is the biggest amount allocated by the EU for the education sector in Lebanon," Lassen was quoted by Elnashra, an independent online newspaper, as saying.

Lassen said that education of children and the youths is one of the most important human rights.

"It is very important in building healthy societies," she said.

Lassen's remarks came during a press conference held with Lebanese caretaker Education Minister Marwan Hamadeh in Beirut.

Meanwhile, Hamadeh said that the ministry is committed to enhancing education in a bid to maintain Lebanon's regional and international rankings in the sector, and to equip next generations to face future challenges and grab the best job opportunities.

The Right to Education Campaign expressed its grave concern over the Israeli Occupying forces' arrest of head of Birzeit University student council Yehya Rabie' at dawn Monday.

Rabie', a third-year student in the Faculty of Business and Economics, was detained from his house in al- Mazra'a Al Gharbiya near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

“Such outrageous acts are categorical violation of international laws and norms, which all forbid any violation against the basic right of people to the right of education, said a press statement issued by the Public Relations Office in Birzeit university.

“The Right to Education Campaign views this attack as a dangerous aggression against academia and Palestinian students. Palestinians aspire to live by the values of democracy, freedom of speech and respect for human rights, and these violations will not deter its commitment to higher education, and the pivotal role it has played since its establishment,” it said.

The statement stressed that these regular attacks are part of systematic oppressive measures aimed at undermining the foundation of our education system, violating basic human rights, terrorizing our youth into submission, especially those who are part of Birzeit University's student council.

Between 2012 and 2018, the Israeli occupation arrested and kidnapped over 20 members of the student council; four of them were the head of the student council at the time of arrest.

This situation escalated during the past academic year (2017-2018), when, and for the first time, an undercover Israeli army unit infiltrated Birzeit University's main campus, during classroom hours, and arrested Omar Kiswani, a 24-year-old political science student and the head of the university's student council.

Since 2004, around 800 of the university's students have been arrested at one time, among them 16 female students. Currently, over 60 students are detained in Israeli prisons, many under administrative detention with no charges.

The Right to Education Campaign, founded in 1988, called for all international support to hold Israel accountable for the crime of breaching the Palestinian youth's right to education, urged all parliamentary representatives, university communities, professional and academic associations, student associations, human rights organizations, and United Nations agencies to take an immediate action to stop Israel's repressive measures against Palestinians and assert their basic rights to learn, grow and prosper freely and independently, the statement concluded.