Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): And we turn now to Syria.
The NewsHour sent freelance video journalist Toby Muse there recently to see how civilians are faring.
As Margaret Warner reports, many have become targets in the country's civil war.
And a warning: Some images may be disturbing.
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): Within the walls of a secret school in Northwest Syria, young students are studying arithmetic, English and Arabic.
Their wide eyes and smiles betray little of the war raging just outside in the streets of their town of al-Bab and across their country.
QUESTION: What does he think when he hears the planes fly overhead?
CHILD (through translator): I don’t have any fear.
MARGARET WARNER: Run by teachers who asked to remain anonymous, this classroom was opened just weeks ago in al-Bab, a city of 120,000 less than an hour from Aleppo, and now ostensibly under control of the rebel forces of the Free Syrian Army, or FSA.
In FSA areas like these, the Syrian government is increasingly turning to air and long-range artillery attacks, hitting not only rebels, but civilian institutions, too.
Six schools in al-Bab were bombed in the last two months, this one by a MiG fighter jet in September, just before students were set to return from summer vacations.
Although some schools remain standing, the scorched murals and homework sheets amidst the rubble warn parents not to send their children back. That's given rise to clandestine classrooms like this one in places thought safer from detection and attack.
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