DAMASCUS, Syria — More and more students at Damascus University were skipping classes. The whack and thump of shelling in the distance punctuated the hum of the downtown campus. Some students walked miles to avoid the security checkpoints that choke traffic.
But classes continued at the Syrian capital’s flagship university, and many students kept coming. The university, where President Bashar al-Assad and many other Syrian elites completed their studies, became a sanctuary for young people still preparing for a future, however uncertain, when their country would not be in the midst of a ferocious civil war.
Then, on Thursday afternoon, a mortar shell crashed into the engineering campus, through the orange canvas awning of a cafe where students were smoking Gauloise cigarettes, chatting and studying on a shiny spring day, in what could have been a university scene playing out anywhere. The blast killed at least 10 students and injured 29, soaking the concrete floor with blood.
With it, the war invaded a campus that, like much of Damascus, the Syrian capital, had done its best to go about its business.
“I was laughing,” recalled Abdelhamid Rifai, a third-year civil engineering student who was taking a break from an exam as a cool wind tossed the eucalyptus trees overhead. “I straightened my chair, and then it happened.”