War Enters the Classrooms
Jon Elmer
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36439
GAZA CITY, Feb 5 (IPS) - The United Nations has indefinitely suspended elementary school classes for tens of thousands of Gaza City's children following a weekend of unprecedented factional violence, which turned this isolated enclave into a war zone and left at least 27 dead and 250 wounded.
John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said, "we try to balance the risk of violence to kids and parents on the one hand, and the need for these kids to get an education on the other."
"The intensity of the fighting was such that we had no choice," Ging told reporters in Gaza.