School lessons ended in Syria's biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.
"I am playing football"; "She is eating an apple"; "The boys are flying a kite" are written in English.
Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria's years of civil war.
Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as "cruelty", sparking a sharp response from Israel which accused him of double standards.
The pontiff made his remarks a day after the rescue agency in Gaza said an Israeli air strike had killed seven children from one family.
"Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised," the pope told members of the government of the Holy See.
"Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war.
"I want to say it because it touches my heart."
At a Damascus intersection, young volunteers act as unofficial traffic cops after police assigned to the duty deserted their posts when president Bashar al-Assad fell to a rapid rebel advance.
Some traffic officers abandoned their uniforms and motorbikes in the street on December 8, the day the rebels took Damascus.
Traffic jams resulted, especially where signals weren't working or crowds gathered to mark the end to more than half a century of paranoid and brutal rule by the Assad clan.
In the towns and villages of southern Syria that Israel has occupied since the overthrow of longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad, soldiers and residents size each other up from a distance.
The main street of the village of Jabata al-Khashab is largely deserted as a foot patrol of Israeli troops passes through it.
Most villagers have cloistered themselves inside their homes since the troops arrived. A few look on through windows and from rooftops.
The suspected perpetrator of a deadly ramming at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday is a 50-year-old Saudi refugee from a Shiite family who declared himself an atheist and "anti-Islam".
Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen had been living in Germany since 2006 and practised as a psychiatrist in the town of Bernburg, near Magdeburg. He had no known links to jihadists.
The United States on Saturday said it struck targets in Yemen's rebel-held capital, hours after a Huthi rebel missile wounded people in Israel's commercial hub Tel Aviv.
The missile, which wounded 16 people, was the second such attack in two days.
Among the targets of US forces was a rebel missile storage centre and a "command-and-control facility," the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.
US officials said Friday that Syria's new leaders had assisted in the hunt for missing journalist Austin Tice, with searches underway at sites of interest.
US diplomats, paying the first visit to Damascus since Islamist-led rebels toppled strongman Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, said they told the new Islamist-led authorities of their priority of finding Tice and other missing Americans.
Tyson Fury weighed in at the heaviest of his career on Friday as he vowed to go to war with Oleksandr Usyk in their world title rematch.
The Englishman, albeit fully clothed, tipped the scales at 281 pounds (127.4kg) -- 19lb heavier than when he lost to the Ukrainian in their unification bout in May.
Usyk, also dressed against the winter chill at Riyadh's Wonder Garden amusement park, weighed 226lb, 2.5lb heavier than seven months ago.
The Israeli military said its forces shot a protester during a demonstration against the army's activities in a village in southern Syria on Friday, injuring him in the leg.
Since Islamist-led rebels toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on December 8 Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military facilities in what it says is a bid to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.
Syrian media outlets which trumpeted the glories of Bashar al-Assad's oppressive rule quickly adopted revolutionary fervour after his ouster, but uncertainty shadows the sector.
For decades, Syria's ruling Baath party and the Assad family dynasty heavily curtailed all aspects of daily life, including freedom of the press and expression.
The media became a tool of those in power.
