More than six years of conflict in Syria have reduced much of the countryside and area surrounding Damascus to rubble, damaging or destroying nearly everything that might hold a community or society together. Yet thousands of families still live in these besieged towns and villages, or in nearby camps for the internally displaced—and they still try their best to give their children chances to learn. In areas that have been captured (or recaptured) and are considered safe, or regions that are relatively untouched by the war, Syrian students are making their way to class despite the risks. The region remains a war zone, however, and air strikes have hit several schools in recent months.
Syria's Students: Going to School in a War Zone
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Syrian schoolchildren run past heavily-damaged buildings in the rebel-held area of Jobar, on the eastern outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus, on April 30, 2016. #
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A wall marred by bullet holes in the school in Hazema, North Raqqa, Syria, photographed on August 21, 2017, shortly after the school re-opened. The ultra-hardline Islamic State closed this school and many others in northern Syria after it seized control of the region in 2014, three years into the country’s civil war. Instead, it taught children extremist thought in mosques. #
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An orrery—a mechanical model of the solar system—sits inside a damaged school in the rebel-held city of Douma, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria, on March 2, 2017. #
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Schoolchildren duck and take cover as a member of the Syrian Civil Defence organization, known as the White Helmets, teaches them how to protect themselves in case of an airstrike during a war safety awareness campaign conducted by the group in the rebel-held area of Harasta, on the northeastern outskirts of the capital Damascus on May 2, 2017. #
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A Syrian boy walks amid the rubble inside his damaged school on November 9, 2017, in the besieged rebel-held town of Hamouria, on the outskirts of Damascus, following air raids by government forces on the area the previous day. #
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Mangled shoes of Syrian schoolchildren lie on the ground following a reported government shelling in the rebel-held besieged town of Jisreen, east of the capital Damascus, on October 31, 2017. The Syrian regime shelling killed four schoolchildren and one man, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. #
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Ten-year-old Abd al-Rahman, who lost both his legs when a Syrian regime mortar shell hit a school earlier in the week in Jisreen, receives treatment at a hospital in the rebel-held town east of Damascus on November 5, 2017. #
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Syrian children tour their damaged school on November 9, 2017, in the rebel-held town of Saqba, on the outskirts of Damascus, following air raids by government forces on the area the previous day. #
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A Syrian child looks into a classroom in a school that was damaged during a reported air strike on March 7, 2017, in the rebel-held town of Utaya, near the capital city of Damascus. #
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A Syrian teaches children basic arithmetic operations during class in a barn. The barn has been converted into a makeshift school to teach internally displaced children from areas under government control, in a rebel-held area of Daraa, in southern Syria on November 10, 2016. The school has a shortage of seats, prompting many children to sit on stones instead. #
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