Duck and Cover Iraq style

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=§ion=focusoniraq&xfile=data/focusoniraq/2007/February/focusoniraq_February136.xml

Iraqi kids get survival lessons in rebel bastion
(AFP)

17 February 2007

RAMADI, Iraq - At the Al Yarubia primary school for boys in Ramadi, the violent capital of Iraq’s vast western Al Anbar province, teachers must give a strange lesson, helping children to learn to hide.

“Kids, if there is fighting, what should a pupil do,” the Sunni teacher asks the class sitting politely behind their desks.

All know the answer by heart, but it is the adult who answers: ”Get away from the windows, stay in the classroom” and “hide under the desks,” which the children promptly do.

As if it were play, they disappear. In the suddenly empty room, not a head peeks out. snip

Nearby, Yas Khudaier watches his former classmates come and go.

The boy sat in a red chrome wheelchair, with grey wool socks pulled up over his lifeless legs.

His father Khudaier al-Dulaimi lifted his jumper to show a scar on the boy’s back.

A year ago he was caught in crossfire between US troops and insurgents.

A bullet severed his spinal cord and he is paralysed, Dulaimi said, showing the nappies his 10-year-old son has to wear.