Israel has gutted the main auditorium of the Islamic University of Gaza and burnt it out. Giant holes have been blasted through its blackened walls. The banks of seats are mangled and twisted.

Now, the stage, once the scene of joyous graduation ceremonies, is crowded with tents of the displaced. The campus has become a refuge for hundreds of families in northern Gaza since Israel broke a ceasefire in March and relaunched the war.

Manal Zaanin, a mother of six, has converted a filing cabinet into a makeshift oven to bake pita bread, which she sells to other families. Her children and other relatives lay out the dough on mattresses in one of the classrooms.

Families pool their resources to buy fuel for tractors to bring in large containers of water. A makeshift market has been set up under the archway of the main gate.

Their struggle to survive has worsened because Israel has cut off the entry of food, fuel, medicine and all other goods into Gaza for more than a month, straining the limited supplies of aid agencies on which nearly the entire population relies.

One of the territory’s largest, the Islamic University of Gaza, had some 17,000 students before the war, studying everything from medicine and chemistry to literature and commerce.

More than 60 percent of its students were women. The campus has been pummelled by air strikes and raids by Israeli ground troops.

Strikes have killed at least 10 of its professors and deans, including the university president; prominent physicist Sufian Tayeh, who was killed along with his family when their home was bombed; and one of its best-known professors, Refaat Alareer, an English teacher who organised workshops for young writers from Gaza.

At Israa University, troops blew up the main buildings in a controlled detonation, levelling them to the ground in January 2024.

No campuses are functioning in the territory, though some universities, including the Islamic University of Gaza, conduct limited online courses.