Parents’ anger at repeated school bombings

PARENTS of pupils who attend the Ayios Nicolaos high school in Limassol are calling on the police to intervene because the school is frequently being bombed.

Yesterday, two pupils, aged 16 and 18, were arrested and remanded in custody for eight days by a Limassol District Court on suspicion of detonating a bomb outside the headmaster’s office at the school.

According to police, it is not the first time that the school has come under such attacks.

Yesterday, the school’s parents’ association called on the police to send officers to guard the school, especially at night when youths often wreak havoc on school grounds.

Neighbours have made countless complaints to the police about troublesome youths who gather at the school in the evenings.

A Limassol police source yesterday told the Cyprus Mail: “We have been receiving complaints about this particular school and what goes on after school hours. We are taking all the appropriate measures to make sure the premises are safe, but to request a 24-hour watch on the school is an entirely different matter.”

The latest explosion occurred at around 10pm on Wednesday night, resulting in the headmaster’s office sustaining damages to its walls, corridor and windows.

At the time of the blast, the school’s drama group was rehearsing the school play in a nearby hall.

CID officers who arrived at the scene said the bomb was a homemade cylinder bomb that was detonated on the window ledge of the headmaster’s office.

Police arrested two pupils yesterday morning in connection with the bombing. They were taken before a Limassol district judge, who ordered that they be remanded in custody for eight days.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.