Caretaker Education and Higher Education Minister Abbas Halabi revealed on Thursday that 62 Lebanese teachers had been killed in the war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel.

In a statement, Halabi paid tribute to the “62 martyrs of the great family of education in Lebanon,” who fell “on the altar of the homeland.”

The Minister offered his “sincere condolences to their families, their schools, their colleagues and above all their students, asking God to have mercy on them and grant them a place in paradise.”

“The journey of each of them is a model and an example to follow for future generations, having sacrificed themselves for the national spirit and in order to defend the message of education and national, educational and moral values, even to the point of martyrdom,” he added.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon have claimed the lives of 3,823 people, up to the latest Health Ministry figures, dated Nov. 26. The war began with Hezbollah's opening of a “support front” in Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel and the start of Israel's offensive on the Palestinian enclave. After almost a year of exchanges of strikes on both sides of the border, the Israeli army launched a large-scale offensive on Lebanon on Sept. 23.