Schools reopen in north Mali
2013-02-04 17:47
Gao - Schools reopened on Monday in Gao in northern Mali
after French and Malian troops moved in and armed Islamists, who had held the
town for seven months fled, an AFP photographer said.
Girls and boys of all ages made their way to public and
private schools in Gao, the largest town in northern Mali which was deserted
under Jihadist rule by many of its 70 000 residents.
At the primary school in the eastern Aljanabandia
district, "about 600 pupils" out of a normal attendance of more than
1 100 children turned up for school, its headmaster Abdou Cisse told AFP.
Classes stopped after the Islamists launched an offensive
against southern Mali on 10 January after occupying the north, prompting rapid
French intervention alongside Mali's troops.
Gao was taken back from the armed Islamists on 26 January.
The primary school was short on equipment on Monday.
For the lack of available classroom space, some pupils
were receiving their lessons on the bare concrete floor.
Cisse said that the armed groups had taken away the desks
for firewood.
The boys and girls were grouped separately in each
classroom, just as they had been told to do by the Islamists, who imposed their
strict interpretation of Muslim sharia law.
However, the headmaster said that this situation would
change in coming days.
Gao, 1 200km northeast of the capital Bamako, had
since June 2012 been a stronghold of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West
Africa (Mujao), one of the Islamist groups that seized the northern half of
Mali last year.
