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Local News

Student stabbed eight times in school fight

A young man was stabbed eight times during a fight which broke out between students at two secondary schools in Safita and Tartous on October 2, Syria News reported.

No’man al-Sayyegh, a first-year student at the Mechanical Engineering College in Tartous, was stabbed while trying to rescue his younger brother Fadi from a brawl. The fight broke out between students at Fadi’s school in Tartous, the Ali Yousef Secondary School, and students from the Safita Industrial Secondary School.

Sayyegh’s mother said Fadi and his schoolmates had warned their teachers that students from Safita were threatening to “teach them a lesson”.

“Though the case is not the first of its kind, the school administration didn’t pay attention to Fadi’s schoolmates’ cautions about the threats,” she said, adding that the school should take full responsibility for the incident.

Head of Tartous’s Al-Mujtaba Hospital Suleiman Mayhob said No’man arrived at the hospital in a “serious condition” with severe bleeding.

“He was stabbed eight times in different parts of his body, seven of the wounds were superficial and one was deep,” Mayhob said.

No’man is now in a stable state and recovering.

Syrian adventurer passes away

Syrian adventurer Adnan Husni Tello died at the age of 98 on October 6. The adventurer visited more than 5,000 cities and towns on four continents over a seven-year period starting in 1957.

Tello, also known as the Arab Traveller, wrote 11 books in his lifetime, including Around the World on a Motorcycle, Old Memories…National Epics and A Room for Rent by an Unknown Man.

Tello was buried at Bab Al-Saghir cemetery in Damascus on October 6.

Boy drowns after falling into cardboard-covered manhole

A 15-year-old boy died in Damascus after he fell into a manhole that had been partially covered with cardboard, Al-Watan reported last month.

Rescue workers searched the city’s sewer system for hours before finding Mohammed Ayash’s body 15km away, near a sewage treatment plant.

Ayash and his mother had been shopping after visiting his grandparents. When his mother turned her back on the boy to pick up her shopping bags, Ayash disappeared. Unbeknown to his mother, Ayash had fallen into a manhole and drowned in the sewer.

While relatives frantically searched the neighbourhood for Ayash, his father noticed a manhole near to where the boy had last been seen which was partially covered with cardboard. Fearing the worst, he called the emergency services.

Thieves often steal metal manhole covers to sell them for scrap at a rate of SYP 13 (USD 0.33) per kilogram, Al-Watan added.