Hamas released on Thursday a list of more than a hundred names of academics and researchers it says have been killed since the war broke out in the Gaza Strip.

“We strongly condemn the killings by the occupation force of scientists, academics, university professors and researchers, people of distinction in the Palestinian society of the Gaza Strip,” underlined the press office of the Hamas government, in power in Gaza since 2007.

“The message is clear. Its purpose is to completely eliminate scientists and researchers,” the text continues.

Among the 104 names on the list is that of Sufyan Tageh, former president of the Islamic University of Gaza, distinguished researcher in the fields of physics and applied mathematics.

The name of the surgeon and professor of medicine Adnan Ahmed Atiya al-Bours is also mentioned.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, Adnan al-Bours, 50, died in prison on April 19; he was arrested by Israeli forces along with other doctors at Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip in December.

Asked about his death in custody, the Israeli military said it was “not aware of such an incident”.

The Hamas government called on “the free countries of the world and all organizations associated with higher education around the world to condemn this historic crime and put pressure on the occupation to end the genocidal war.”

The announcement came amid student protests on college campuses in the US and Europe against the war.

The war erupted when Hamas’s military arm launched an unprecedented raid on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, killing more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. Of the 252 people abducted during the attack, 128 are still in the Gaza Strip, but 38 are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

Israel’s retaliatory military operations have since wreaked havoc in the enclave, killing at least 35,272 people, most of them civilians, according to the latest casualty count released by Hamas’ health ministry.

During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an area from which it unilaterally withdrew in 2005, two years before Hamas took power in the enclave.