Iraq analysis

[Al-khiyal]

U.S. Marine killed in Al Anbar

[Al-khiyal]

Two U.S. Marines killed in Al Anbar

[Al-khiyal]

U.S. soldier killed in Mosul bomb attack

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U.S. soldier dies in Balad

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Seven more U.S. soldiers killed by roadside bombs in Iraq

[Cheba_Mami]

and they want to send more soldiers? in life it's often: what you give is what you get. If you kill, you get killed.... simple.

[Al-khiyal]

Mortar attack on Baghdad girls' school kills five

BAGHDAD: The girls had just finished taking an examination at a school in the Sunni Adil neighborhood and were gathering in an inner courtyard Sunday when a mortar shell landed among them.

Witnesses said the explosion killed at least five girls from 12 to 16 years old and wounded at least 20, tearing away limbs, shattering glass, shredding the students' blue and white uniforms and leaving the survivors bloodied and in shock.

"She hugged and kissed me, then went outside and the bomb hit," a teacher at the scene said of one of the victims. "After a few minutes, she was dead.

"We just don't know what to do with the other girls. They're young. They've never seen this."

In a city seemingly numb to bloodshed, attacks on schools still have the capacity to shock. The assault Sunday seemed to confirm that the violence here knows no boundaries.

It was the latest in a series of assaults on schools and those who educate children.

Two months ago, a teacher in a Sunni area of Western Baghdad was raped, mutilated, strung up by her feet outside a school building and left to hang for days, according to American military officers in the area.

In the past month, according to Interior Ministry officials, primary and secondary schools in and around Baghdad have been targets at least six times. In some cases, gunmen ambushed schools during classes and guards fought them off.

In other cases, mortar shells struck, killing 10 at Al Gharbiya, for example, a secondary school in central Baghdad.

Several principals and teachers have been kidnapped and killed, a pattern of terror that started with university professors and seems to have trickled down the educational chain.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Education said this month that more guards would be added at primary and secondary schools throughout the city, further confirming that they were becoming a battleground.

He declined to give reporters permission to visit.

For many Iraqis, the risk that comes with learning has already become too great, regardless of government protection. In many Sunni areas, according to parents and teachers, schools are emptying out, with students going to class only a few days a week, if at all.

In Amman, Isra Qasim, 35, said she had fled Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood, a former Sunni middle-class enclave that now resembles a bombed-out wasteland, because she feared what might happen to her 6-year-old at school. She left a few months ago, in time to register him for classes in Amman.

"I came here for him," she said in an interview. "He said he wanted to learn."

Some schools have lost more than a third of their students to emigration. Others, like Al Gharbiya, remain closed because of the violence.

The all-girls school hit Sunday, Al Khuroud, was in an area near an office of Adnan Dulaimi, a senior Sunni member of Parliament. Several members of his family live close by.

It was unclear whether the attack had been aimed at the girls.

Residents of the neighborhood said that mortar shells had been raining down for days, possibly in retaliation from Shiite areas where large bombings have been concentrated in recent weeks, killing at least 300 people throughout the city.

Windows of the school's three two- story concrete buildings were shattered, and the school yard was covered with blood. About 100 girls had been standing there, chattering and laughing, at the time of the attack.

Teachers and residents said they were not sure when or if they would return.

Schools caught up in the Iraqi carnage