GAZA: Palestinian pupil Mohammed Shaban sits alongside classmates at a school in Beit Lahia yesterday.

GAZA: Eight-year-old Mohammed Shaban dreamed of returning to the classroom in Gaza for the start of the school year. But after an exploded missile blinded him in May, he is staying home. Mohammed used to attend school with his cousins and neighbors in the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. He is one of hundreds of children the United Nations says were injured during fighting in May between the Zionist entity and Hamas, which controls the Palestinian enclave.

From May 10 to 21, the Zionist army pummeled the Gaza Strip. Mohammed said he was walking to a market to buy clothes during the conflict when a missile exploded. As a result of the blast, his father Hani said, "Mohammed was injured in the eyes, which led to the loss of his eyes, and Mohammed became completely blind."

The Shabans say Mohammed was injured by a missile fired by the Zionists. The boy still hoped to return to school, Hani said, and his new disability left him moody and unpredictable. "He sometimes asks me, 'When will I see', or 'When will I go back to school with the children', or 'When will I go out to the street alone'," Hani said.

Human Rights Watch has accused both the Zionist entity and Gaza of war crimes during the conflict. Zionist air strikes killed 260 Palestinians, and HRW said Zionist strikes were not always directed at military targets. For now, Mohammed grips his father's hand, his head facing down, as they walk through their neighborhood. They step along narrow dirt streets lined by cinderblock walls covered in graffiti.

At home, Hani Shaban guided his son to sit down on cushions and showed him the collared shirts of his school uniform. Mohammed gripped a pen and tried to form letters in a notebook as his parents encouraged him. "In the future, I hope he can go to a special school for the disabled," said Somaya Shaban, Mohammed's mother. She took her son in her arms and burst into tears.

In the meantime, Mohammed is determined not to lose touch with his old classmates. Yesterday, he insisted on going to school to catch up with them - and his parents obliged. Sitting in the front row, he tried briefly to follow a lesson, his mother Somaya and friends sitting beside him. "He was really excited to hear the school clock," his mother said. - AFP