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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Braving rebel shelling, students head back to Damascus schools

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DAMASCUS: Hanan anxiously waved goodbye as her 11-year-old daughter headed into class in Syria’s capital after more than a week at home under escalating rebel shellfire. “I can’t describe my anxiety from the moment Lina leaves for school, until she returns. It’s like she’s coming back from some adventure or battle, not from class,” the 44-year-old mother said. Hanan lives with her husband and three daughters in Al Amin, a neighbourhood at the heart of Damascus’s Old City which has been bombarded by rebels entrenched outside the capital.


Fighting between government troops and rebels escalated during the second week of February, forcing nearly a dozen schools in the Old City to shut for several days and prompting terrified parents to keep children at home. Hanan kept her daughters out of school for eight days. On Sunday, she woke up and checked a Facebook page called “Daily Mortar Strikes — Damascus” to see where shelling had hit overnight.


Nervously, she sent her daughters off to class, personally accompanying Lina on the 10-minute walk to Josephine’s Girls School.


“Today was better. We woke up to our alarms instead of explosions,” she said.


The walk to school has become so dangerous that Hanan said she would rather keep Lina at home.


“It’s better that my daughter loses a year of school than lose her life, or that I lose her,” she said.


Although it has been relatively insulated from the mass destruction wreaked on other Syrian cities, Damascus is regularly bombarded by armed opposition factions based in nearby Eastern Ghouta. Syrian troops have recaptured most rebel positions around the capital in recent years, and are determined to clear the final pocket in Eastern Ghouta. Government forces intensely bombarded the enclave for five days earlier this month, killing dozens, as rebel rockets and mortars on Damascus killed at least 20 people including three children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. — AFP


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