Small boys wearing backpacks gathered in a Syrian elementary school on Saturday, smiling as they walked between desks covered in dust.

In the classroom, light filtered in through a gaping hole in the ceiling, with crumbling concrete and exposed steel bars suspended overhead. The building was damaged at some point during Syria’s brutal six-year conflict, which has turned this residential area outside Damascus, the capital, into a battleground.

In another classroom on Saturday, the metal grate covering a window was bent inward, the result of a forceful blast. The walls of the school building were pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel.