The classroom became their coffin: How many more children must die before the world says enough?

There is no word strong enough, no sentence sharp enough, to capture the horror that unfolded on May 25 when Israeli air strikes turned a school into a grave. Dozens of people, including women and children — some not old enough to write their names — were burned alive in a place that was supposed to protect them.

Of the 36 people who perished in the attack on the Fahmi al-Jargawi school in Gaza, 20 were children. And with some 60 others in hospital with severe burns, the death toll is bound to go up.

“The fire broke out in a span of seconds,” Abd al-Nahal, an eyewitness, told the Mada Masr news outlet. “The displaced had no chance to evacuate the tents and classrooms — the flames engulfed them before they realized what was happening,” he added.

“Children and women were screaming inside the classrooms, calling for help, while we had no real tools to extinguish the fire,” he said. “The scenes were terrifying and horrific.”

“The charred bodies of children laid in front of me. I could not even carry them; they were burning hot from the intense heat,” he continued.

“I saw a child through a classroom window burning alive while calling his mother, who had burned beside him. This scene will never leave my memory,” he added.

This is not a tragedy. Tragedy implies accident. This was not an accident. This was a choice.

Let us not hide behind euphemisms. Let us not excuse mass murder with the tired refrain of “collateral damage.” These were children — innocent, defenseless, trapped. Whatever the justification, whatever the intelligence, whatever the objective, there is no moral calculus that can legitimize the slaughter of children.

What happened on May 25 is not just an Israeli failure. It is a global failure. A failure of humanity. A failure of law. A failure of every leader who utters the words “we are concerned” and then signs another weapons deal. A failure of every headline that calls it a “strike” and not what it is: a massacre.

What are we becoming when we watch this and turn the page? When we see dust-caked faces, tiny bodies wrapped in white sheets, sobbing parents clawing at the earth — and feel nothing more than a pang of sorrow before scrolling on?

Israel says it is targeting Hamas. But the world needs to ask: how many schools, how many hospitals, how many markets, how many children must die before the war on terror becomes indistinguishable from terror itself?

Some say those who died were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they were not. They were exactly where they should have been — at a school sheltering them. It is the bombs that were in the wrong place. The missiles. The men who launched them. The leaders who greenlit them. The silence that allowed them.

To those still defending this carnage: look at the photos. Really look. At the scorched notebooks. The bloodied backpacks. The broken bodies. And then ask yourself — what kind of monster kills a child in the name of defense?

This must stop. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.

Because every minute that passes without justice is another minute where a child somewhere is sitting in a classroom that may never survive the next missile.