logo

At the SMR8 secondary school in Banda Aceh where only 300 of nearly 900 enrolled students turned up the girls squatted

Posted by admin   ·     ·   Jump to comments

At the SMR8 secondary school in Banda Aceh, where only 300 of nearly 900 enrolled students turned up, the girls squatted in the newly cleaned basketball court, praying and reciting from the Koran. Some cried or held their heads in their hands; other stared blankly ahead. As the principal, Syarifuddin Ibrahim, read out the names of nine teachers killed in the disaster, cries of anguish rose from the students. The Aceh authorities say 45,000 school children and more than 2,300 teachers and administrators died.It was not just the pupils and teachers who disappeared Many of the schools vanished without trace. Many failed to reopen for one simple reason: they no longer exist. The traumatised children of Aceh got another harsh lesson in mortality yesterday when schools reopened for the first time since the tsunami that devastated the province exactly one month ago.

Those schools that survived reassembled with only a fraction of their students and teachers. A little boy called Alquasar, hair neatly parted and with a Power Rangers bag on his back, arrived at school with his mother to find he was one of only six in a class that formerly numbered 43 He looked around bleakly for his best friend Andi "I don't think he's coming," he whispered There was no need to ask why. "Of course, we have our own stances and we are talking to the Europeans and we hope to reach a conclusion." Iran has agreed to suspend activities which could be used to make nuclear bomb material, such as uranium enrichment, and to try to reach a negotiated solution. Their goal is to achieve a military programme".Pressure on Iran has been increasing recently in the form of aggressive statements from the Bush administration, branding the Tehran regime an "outpost of tyranny". Mr Cheney said Iran's nuclear programme put it at the "top of the list" of global issues.The Iranian President, Mohamed Khatami, retorted: "We say that America is at the top of the list of countries that are endangering world peace and security and we hope that one day they come to their senses."[Negotiations with the EU] haven't reached a dead end," Mr Khatami went on. But Mr Mofaz said: "Although there are some achievements by the suspension of the military programme, there is not a full stop.".

Mr Mofaz rejected Iranian assertions that it was working on a peaceful civilian programme, saying that there was "no goal by the Iranian side for a civilian programme. He echoed comments by the Mossad intelligence agency, which said that Iran could have developed a nuclear bomb in three years, a statement dismissed by Iran as baseless. Israel's Defence Minister refused to rule out a pre-empt-ive strike on Iran yesterday, claiming that Tehran was "close to a point of no return" on its suspected development of a nuclear weapon. The insurgent group led by al-Qa'ida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack.The KDP is one of the two largest Kurdish political organisations in Iraq, and part of a coalition of 11 Kurdish groups for the elections.

readers comments

Comments are closed.

NBA

NBA

MLB

MLB

NFL

NFL

NHL

NHL

WWE

WWE

Your sideblock text goes here