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EDUCATION UNDER ATTACK 2014including during the Ramadan Offensive in Mogadishuin August 2010. For example, one boy recounted thathis school had been ‘continually attacked’ by Al-Shabaab during the offensive and that, in oneincident, a neighbouring classroom had been shelled.Another student claimed that in Baidoa, in late 2010,Al-Shabaab militants pulled up outside his school andshelled it. 1371Explosives placed on or near school grounds seriouslyendangered students and teachers. In one case, abomb planted near Mahamud Harbi SecondarySchool, in Wardhigley, exploded in November 2011,killing four children. 1372 In August 2012, explosives leftoutside a school killed at least six children aged from 5to 10 and injured at least four more who were playingwith them in the town of Balad. 1373Attacks on school students, teachers and othereducation personnelIn October 2011, a suicide attack by Al-Shabaab 1374 atthe Ministry of Education killed an estimated 100 ormore people, 1375 many of whom were students andparents waiting for scholarship examination results.Another suicide bombing at Benadir University’sgraduation ceremony (see Attacks on highereducation) in Mogadishu killed the Minister ofEducation in December 2009; 1376 and eight studentswere killed in a suicide bombing on school groundscarried out by an 11-year-old disguised as a food sellerin October 2009. 1377In areas it controlled, Al-Shabaab imposed its interpretationof Islam on schools and threatened or killedteachers for refusing to comply with its demands. 1378This included prohibiting the teaching of English,geography and history; forcing the separation of girlsand boys in schools and restricting girls’ dress;preventing women from teaching; imposing their ownteachers in schools; and using class time to teachextreme Islamist ideology. 1379 The US StateDepartment reported that, in at least one instance in2011, Al-Shabaab offered to reward academicachievement with AK-47 rifles. 1380 In September 2009,Al-Shabaab warned against using UN-providedtextbooks, claiming they were teaching students ‘un-Islamic’ subjects. They also called for parents not tosend their children to schools using a UN-supportedcurriculum. 1381 In April 2010, Al-Shabaab reportedlyforbade schools in Jowhar from announcing the end ofclasses with bells because they were reminiscent ofthose rung in churches. 1382 This violence andharassment has caused teachers to flee, hundreds ofschools to close for varying lengths of time, andstudents, particularly girls, to drop out in largenumbers. 1383In one instance, a teacher reported to Human RightsWatch that he fled Somalia in 2011 after the headteacher and deputy at his school were shot for refusingto stop teaching certain subjects. At his previousschool, Al-Shabaab fighters had stabbed him in theupper lip with a bayonet while he was teaching ageography lesson and had abducted a female teachernot wearing a hijab. Her body was later found near thetown mosque. 1384In a similar vein, Hizbul Islam, an armed Islamist groupwhich merged with Al-Shabaab in late 2010,reportedly arrested a head teacher who had raised aSomali flag over his school in December 2009. Thegroup replaced the flag with a black Islamist one.Students took to the street in protest, drawing firefrom Hizbul Islam militants that killed at least twostudents and injured another five. 1385 In otherinstances, teachers were targeted for refusing to enliststudents as Al-Shabaab fighters (see Childrecruitment from schools).Some teachers, students and education officials werealso kidnapped and held for ransom during 2009-2012 including the education minister for the region ofGalmudug, reportedly for refusing to pay a ransom forthe release of a kidnapped student. 1386Insecurity and Al-Shabaab threats impeded humanitarianand development assistance for education,with particular agencies, humanitarian workers,offices and supplies targeted. 1387 Al-Shabaabproclaimed a ban on more than a dozen individualagencies from 2009 onwards and imposed anotherban in 2011 on 16 aid organizations operating in areasunder its control, including several UN agencies. 1388On 6 January 2009, three masked gunmen shot andkilled 44-year-old Somali national Ibrahim HusseinDuale while he was monitoring school feeding in a179