University students stuck in the treacherous middle

Wedged between the Sunni neighbourhood of Baba Amr to the west and Alawite areas to the east, the Al Baath University campus is at the heart of the conflict that has ripped apart Syria's opposition stronghold of Homs, write Samer Mohajer and Loveday Morris for The National.

It is a university in turmoil. Alawite students, from the same sect as the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, are pitched against Sunnis, who make up the bulk of the opposition. But amid the tumult, many students are still desperately trying to complete their degrees, dodging violence and checkpoints to sit end-of-year exams.

Nader, a 23-year-old Sunni Muslim in the fourth year of an engineering programme, said most of the students who sympathise with the revolution have left. Others have been killed in the violence or detained in campus raids. With the administration in support of the regime, opposition sympathisers who remain only come in for exams and leave again as quickly as they can.
Full report on The National site