Children return to school in Libya's war-torn Benghazi

Schools in the war-torn Libyan city of Benghazi reopened Sunday for the first time in a year and a half, although international peace efforts have yet to quell the fighting.

"I'm so happy to be back at school," a 13-year-old girl said before going into class at Beshayer school.

Its classrooms stand just 500 metres (yards) away from the scene of some of the fiercest clashes between government forces and armed groups including jihadists over the past 18 months.

"Everything's quite normal," she said, a whisp of hair showing beneath a flowery yellow headscarf. "I'm not scared." 

In jeans and sweatshirts, young pupils improvised a football game in the schoolyard. Outside, parents dropped off their children, relieved their education was back on track.

Abdelaziz al-Dinali waved his two children goodbye from his parked car as they resumed classes, two months later than pupils in the rest of the country.

"God willing, with the return to school, security will also return to Benghazi," he said.

Schools in Libya's second city closed in mid-2014, with the country in chaos ever since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Islamist-backed militias seized the capital that summer, prompting the internationally recognised government to flee to the far east of the country.

As a temporary solution, the local education board instructed children in Benghazi, 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) to the east of Tripoli, to study the national curriculum at home.

Parents picked up schoolbooks from government offices and children only went to school for exams.

Photo Caption: © AFP/File | Libyan students play in the courtyard of the al-Bashayer school in the eastern coastal city of Benghazi on December 13, 2015, as they come back to school for the first time since August 2014