A/HRC/8/17 page 12 Palestinian human rights organizations, 50 per cent of the Gaza educational sector was paralysed as students and teachers could not reach schools. Absenteeism in schools and universities varied from 20 to 50 per cent, compromising the full enjoyment of the right to education.38 26. The closure of Gaza also impacted on the residents’ freedom of religion or belief by preventing them from worshipping at some of the most sacred Muslim and Christian sites, such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. 27. The closure also affected negatively the situation of detainees both before and during the reporting period. Following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, the Israeli security forces decided to suspend family visits for Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip. By April 2008, 760 detainees from Gaza (including 4 women) were affected by this decision. In addition, the International Committee of the Red Cross visits programme, running since 1968, stopped shortly before the Hamas takeover in June 2007, during a period of intense violence. Since then, Israel has not agreed to resume the system, through which the ICRC coordinates and facilitates the visits of close relations to the imprisoned Gazans. Since June 2007, communication between detainees and their families has been reduced to letters from prison, which take about six weeks to arrive in Gaza. The ICRC stated that before June, it relayed only about 10 messages a month between prisoners and their families, but now that number had risen to up to 300 a month - stressing that these short messages, subject to military censors, are hardly ideal.39 28. The negative effects on the enjoyment of human rights resulting from the Israeli closure of Gaza were reportedly in some cases exacerbated by interferences with the humanitarian work of a number of aid agencies and developmental organizations operating in the Gaza Strip, who lamented that political pressure not to collaborate with Hamas officials in Gaza hampered their effectiveness. B. Violence against the civilian populations Background 29. According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in the period between 25 February and 25 April 2008, 221 Palestinians were killed as a result of the international armed Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (19 in the West Bank, 202 in Gaza). In addition, approximately 160 Palestinians were injured in the West Bank and 300 in the Gaza Strip. During the same period, 10 Israeli civilians were killed and around 25 injured. The Israeli air force conducted at least 75 air strikes on different targets within the Gaza Strip during the reporting period. 38 Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Press Release, 14 April 2008. 39 IRIN/OCHA, 22 April 2008, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77862.