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TEHRAN, May 24 - The fight for control of Libya's capital is depriving tens of thousands of pupils of their education, with high school students displaced by the violence fretting about their future.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - "We've fallen behind... and I don't even know where we will sit our final exams or how they will calculate my grades," said Mayar Mostafa, a teenager in her last year of high school.
Mostafa said the fighting has forced her and her family to flee their home in a southern Tripoli suburb, while her school has shut its doors.
All this has left her "psychologically stressed out", she lamented.
Mostafa is among those who are living in limbo -- not knowing when they will be able to resume their studies to salvage the school year, or when life as a whole might return to normal.
On April 4, strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to seize the capital Tripoli and unseat the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).
More than 75,000 people have been driven from their homes in the latest fighting and 510 have been killed, according to the World Health Organization.
More than 2,400 have also been wounded, while 100,000 people are feared trapped by the clashes raging on the capital's outskirts.
Fighting between Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army and forces loyal to the GNA continues to rage south of Tripoli, and the UN envoy has warned of a "long and bloody war".
Mostafa remembers the day the fighting erupted, saying she was woken by "the deafening sound of machine-gun fire and cannons".
"We had to flee our home in the midst of a decisive school year," she said.
"I was planning to go to university next year... Now I don't know my fate".
According to the UN's agency for children, UNICEF, the fighting is "directly affecting some 122,088 children".
"The academic year has been suspended in all schools in conflict-affected areas, and seven schools are currently sheltering displaced families," UNICEF said last month.
It noted that an "attack on an education warehouse destroyed 5 million schoolbooks and national school exam results" in April.
In many schools classes are suspended because teachers have been trapped by fighting and are unable to reach work.
Source: AFP
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