Teachers in Raqqa countryside have opened school doors to children after years during the past few weeks despite destruction of school buildings as they were at the top of the list of International Coalition targets to fight ISIS.
According to Abdullah al-Khalil from Raqqa province, Ibn Rushd Elementary School in the village of al-Salhabiya al-Sharqiya in Raqqa western countryside opened its doors to receive the children of the village after years of closure during the rule of the Islamic State. He pointed out that his friend and colleague Fadi al-Hadi returned from Germany to al-Salhabiya and contributed to the opening of the village school with individual efforts on August 14.
He explained that contact with his friend Fadi is difficult now because of the lack of internet and telephone. He pointed out that Fadi was the school principal before ISIS took over his village which pushed him to migrate to Europe due to ISIS tightening on all opposition against Bashar Assad regime, but recently he returned and gathered his fellow teachers to follow up their duty to educate the children of the village voluntarily.
A group of young people opened school classes on an individual initiative to teach the children of Yarmouk village more than a month and a half ago despite the damaged buildings, amidst a complete absence of the so-called Raqqa Civil Council. The initiators used one of the least destroyed small schools to start teaching children amid the lack of teaching aids and classrooms in this school, as mentioned by Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently campaign.
At the same time, displaced people live in some good school buildings, as in the Khirbet al-Riz school where about 20 families live, according to local sources.
For its part, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) trained 24 teachers and teachers from Raqqa for a one-month in the village of Tel Habash in the city of Amouda to prepare them for the opening of schools in the cities of al-Tabaqa and Ayn Issa during the coming school year.
Pro-PYD sources said the teachers had been trained in women's history, women's science, the history of Syria, the revolution of Rojava, the sociology of freedom and other classes.
The raids of the International Coalition and the battles destroyed and damaged the schools of Muawiya, Hittin, Intifada, Farouk, Abu Alaa Maari, Osama bin Almunqiz, Hamida, Ali Daham and Tariq ibn Ziyad, al-Rashed, al-Jahiz, al-Waleed and other Raqqa schools, while Russian planes focused their attacks on the schools of the south-eastern countryside as considered the only large cement buildings in these poor towns and villages.
