Syrian children attend classes at damaged school

(14 Oct 2021) LEAD IN

After over a year of coronavirus-related school closures and delays, students are returning to class in northwest Syria.

In one village in southern Idlib, children are studying in classrooms without windows at a school that was partially destroyed because of the war.



STORY-LINE:

To make it to school, the Syrian children in a southern Idlib village have to walk through streets lined with destroyed buildings.

Their school building itself has been subjected to extensive damage because of the ongoing S yrian conflict.

But teachers are worried about the conditions children face and school principal Iyad Zariq fears that the worst is yet to come.

"We tried to reconstruct some of the classrooms but we are heading into winter and the majority of the classrooms need windows," he says.

The academic year kicked off later than expected because of an uptick of coronavirus cases in the last few months, which delayed the start of the school year.

The surge in virus cases came amid the most serious increase in violence in Idlib, 18 months after a truce reached between Turkey and Russia who support rival sides in Syria's conflict brought relative calm.

In recent months, airstrikes and artillery shelling by government forces have left scores of people dead or wounded.

Syria has been mired in a 10-year civil war that has left hundreds of thousands dead, and displaced millions of people, including over five million refugees outside the country.

School teacher Mahmoud Wahoob says after so many years of war, the children face a lot of challenges and the school is not adequately equipped to handle these problems.

Some children have had to skip school because of the fighting so they have fallen behind, he adds.



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