Baghdad schoolteachers still in harm's way

Baghdad: Gunmen killed a schoolteacher on Wednesday on her way to class in a well-to-do Baghdad neighbourhood, the third attack on Iraqi educators this week.

Police said Hana Lafta Mohsin, 35, a mathematics teacher at the Mansour neighbourhood's Intifada Intermediate School, was shot in the head by unknown assailants. She died at a local hospital.

On Sunday, gunmen stormed into a primary school in the Sadiya neighbourhood of south Baghdad and killed headmistress Bushra Abdul Hurr in front of her students.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, armed men abducted a school principal on Monday. The men stopped a car transporting several teachers, and released all but the principal, Emmad Mohammad, said one of the teachers, who asked not to be named.

A Baghdad police official said he was not aware of a connection between the two shootings in the capital, but said the resumption of school after a three-month-long Iraqi summer break could have been a factor.

Violence

Iraqi schools have been plagued by violence before. Schools shut down in parts of Baghdad in 2006 at the height of the country's civil war, with some teachers targeted by extremist groups. University professors also have been regularly targeted by militants and criminal gangs since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi army spokesman in Baghdad said that improving security conditions had prompted the return of more than 46,000 Iraqis to their homeland during October. They were among more than two million Iraqis who have taken refuge primarily in neighbouring Jordan and Syria.

Qasim Atta, spokesman for the Iraqi element of the US surge, also cited the start of the school year as a possible reason for the return of families to Iraq. Atta spoke during a news conference on Al Iraqiya television. However, both Syria and Jordan have recently tightened immigration restrictions, forcing Iraqis to leave when their three-month visas expire unless they qualify for refugee status.

Ata did not indicate how many, if any, Iraqis had left the country in the same month.