there. Another resident who lives nearby said that middle school staff told him they plan to teach students in two shifts in the building that was not damaged until the damaged building can be repaired.

Syrian opposition groups captured Tafas in August 2013. All the witnesses Human Rights Watch spoke to said that there were no fighters or other military objects in or near the areas that were attacked on June 14. "The rebels are far from the town, on agricultural lands and in old bases," said Abu Wesal, a civil defense worker who responded to the attacks. The opposition Free Syrian Army stated that it launched rocket and artillery attacks against Syrian army vehicles at a checkpoint in Khirbet Ghazala, about 15 kilometers east of Tafas, on Junedropped the bombs. A fixed-wing aircraft is briefly visible in a video posted online by Shahid, a local media organization, which the group described as footage of the first airstrike on Tafas. Two subsequent airstrikes hit the north and east of Tafas, causing minor injuries, a second civil defense worker said.

The United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, reported at least 87 attacks on schools or educational staff in Syria in 2016, which killed 255 children in or near schools. The Syrian Human Rights Committee reported 132 attacks against "educational institutes" in 2016, including 113 by Syrian-Russian airstrikes. A Syrian nongovernmental humanitarian group, the Assistance Coordination Unit, found that 27 percent of the 3,373 schools it assessed in November and December 2016 in 90 subdistricts in Syria had been damaged