September 26, 2024
Zeina, Zahraa and Banin, three sisters of the Gambian Maarif Schools, were martyred in an Israeli bomb attack on civilian settlements in Hanaway, southern Lebanon, where they were visiting family with their mother Muna Katbay, at around 05:00 on Monday morning, September 23.
The Lebanese family's three daughters, who were very popular at school, were studying at Maarif Schools in the capital Banjul. The youngest of the girls, Banin Muhammad Katbay, 4, and Zahraa Muhammad Katbay, 6, were students at the Maarif Kindergarten, while their older sister, Zeina Muhammad Katbay, 11, was in the 5th grade of the Gambia Maarif Primary School.
Together with their mother, Mona Saksouk Katbay, the family had traveled to their relatives in the southern Lebanese town of Hanaway a week before the school opened to condole the death of their aunt who had cancer. Only the father, Mohammed Katbay, remained in Gambia.
It was learned that before the terrorist state, which has been committing genocide in Gaza for a year, attacked civilian settlements in Lebanon with bombs, the mother Muna Katbay was talking to her friends in Gambia and hung up the phone due to the screams of her daughters who were crying with the sounds of bombs nearby, and then they died with her three little daughters in the attacks that followed. Condolences in the neighborhood have been well attended for two days.
On the same day, the International Maarif School in Gambia was opened. The news of the martyrdom of three students of the school was learned in the evening.
Martyr Muna Katbay met Emine Erdoğan at the opening of the Maarif School
Since 2016, Turkish Maarif Foundation has been conducting international education activities on behalf of Türkiye with approximately 54 thousand students in 465 schools, 1 university and 19 education centers in 54 countries around the world. Emine Erdoğan, wife of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, attended the opening of Turkish Maarif Foundation's school in Gambia on January 20, 2020. Emine Erdoğan also took a photo with Muna Katbay, a mother who was martyred with her three young daughters by terrorist bombs in Lebanon the previous day.
