Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti
. MtlLWlONU
FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2013
Mortar attack at Damascus University
kills 12 students
DAMASCUS
Each side blames other
after 12 students die
at Damascus University
BY ANNE BARNARD
Enrollment at Damascus University
had plummeted. Distant explosions in¬
terrupted lectures and exams. Getting
to class had become a chore with all the
security checkpoints tying up traffic
throughout the capital.
But the gates remained open at Syria's
most prestigious place of higher educa¬
tion and students kept coming, prepar¬
ing for a future when their country was
not in the midst of a ferocious civil war.
Only about a quarter of the students
had ventured back to Damascus Uni¬
versity's engineering campus for ex¬
ams on Thursday, just two days after a
mortar shell exploded a few hundred
meters away.
It was a shiny, cloudless spring day, ir¬
resistible to several dozen students
clustered at an outdoor cafe, smoking,
chatting and studying as a cool wind
tossed the eucalyptus trees overhead.
"I was laughing," Abdelhamid Rifai, a
third-year student, recalled later. "I
straightened my chair, and then it
happened."
A mortar shell crashed through the
orange canvas awning and exploded.
Twelve students lay dead or fatally
wounded, slumped at tables and
sprawled on the concrete floor, said uni¬
versity staff members who arrived mo¬
ments later.
In an instant, the two-year war tear¬
ing at the country had burst into a cam¬
pus that, like much of the Syrian capital,
had done its best to go about business. It
was the first time the university had
suffered such a deadly attack.
At the scene itself, the awning that
had shielded cafe tables from the sun
was drooped and riddled with holes.
Pools of blood congealed on the con¬
crete patio, littered with upended
plastic chairs and packs of Gauloises
and Winston cigarettes.
At the hospital, standing outside the
room of a friend wounded in the attack,
Roaa Salem, a student, said she would
not come back.
"I know Syria needs us right now,"
she said, "but..." She trailed off.
"Enough," she said. "I give up."
The Syrian war had already trans¬
formed the lives of many students. They
have lost friends to attacks off campus.
They struggle to concentrate. Many stay
home; others walk three kilometers, or
nearly two miles, to class because of
ubiquitous security checkpoints that
choke traffic. Instead of staying out late
at restaurants, Mr. Rifai-now goes home
at 4 p.m. to play video games or help a
neighborhood militia watch the streets
for suspicious strangers.
After the mortar strike on Thursday,
many students said, they felt they
and their education had become tar¬
gets.
"They want to stop our studies," said
Alaa, a student standing outside the
campus gate, still holding the clear
plastic ruler she had brought to her in¬
terrupted exam.
The engineering dean, Muhammad
Gharib, said; "They want to paralyze
the country." He was getting into a car
to drive his daughter, a first-year stu¬
dent, to safety. "The students are inno¬
cent," he said.
Exactly who "they" were remained
unclear. The government blamed rebel
fighters, who have edged into outlying
neighborhoods of the Syrian capital,
within easy artillery range of the heart
of the city.
Insurgents have struck with increas¬
ing audacity at President Bashar al-As-
sad's center of power in recent weeks.
But the main rebel fighting group
denied responsibility, asserting that it
would never target a school filled with
students, and suggested that Mr. As¬
sad's agents had carried out the attack
to inflame passions against the rebel¬
lion.
In Damascus, the war is ever-present,
but largely held at bay. All day and all
night, the whack of outgoing mortar
shells and the thud of impact can be
heard in the center. Concrete barriers
lace the streets, some painted with
hearts and Syrian flags. But most fight¬
ing remains on the outskirts.
On Thursday, after the attack, women
pushed children in strollers to busy
parks. Vegetable sellers hawked spring
garlic and fuzzy green almonds.
Mr. Assad's government has actively
n
sought to incubate an aura of normalcy
in the center of Damascus despite the
mayhem that has flared in other parts of
the capital, but that effort has increas¬
ingly faltered. In recent weeks, central
Umayyad Square and the nearby
Tishreen presidential palace have been
targeted in insurgent mortar attacks, al¬
though there had been few casualties.
Last week, a bombing at a Damascus
mosque near Mr. Assad's Baath Party
headquarters killed more than 40
people including the top Sunni Muslim
cleric in the country. The insurgency
and the government blamed each other
for that bombing.
Students interviewed after the attack
on the cafe said that, normally, at least
400 students would have been taking
Thursday's exam. But increasing fears
of war-related violence had led to heavy
absenteeism, and the number of test
takers was more like 50.
The Associated Press, quoting an
unidentified Syrian official, said at least
20 people had been wounded in the uni¬
versity attack.
The state news media attributed the
attack to "terrorists," the government's
generic term for armed rebels who have
been fighting to topple Mr. Assad, call¬
ing it a "barbaric massacre."
Loaey Mikdad, a spokesman for the
Free Syrian Army, the main rebel fight¬
ing group, denied responsibility. "This
is just inhumane and we would not do
it," Mr. Mikdad said in atelephone inter¬
view.
It is certainly notthe first time during
the conflict that university students
have been killed or wounded on cam¬
pus. Two months ago, more than 80
people were killed at Aleppo University
also during exams when multiple
explosions possibly caused by air¬
strikes or bombs struck near a dormito-
ry complex. The Assad government and
insurgents accused each other of re¬
sponsibility in that attack.
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