FOR more than two years the war in Iraq was a backdrop of wearily familiar sounds heard from inside the safety of the classrooms of Dijla Elementary School — sirens, helicopters, gunfire and the occasional crump of a car bomb.

Teachers and pupils had hoped that they were immune from the mayhem outside, until soon after 11am on a Thursday, halfway through an Arabic grammar lesson, when a mortar round smashed through the ceiling and exploded.

When the headmistress, Wajaeda Sharhan, arrived a few minutes after the explosion, in a room full of smoke and dust, she was confronted with a sight that no teacher should ever have to see in their school. Among the screaming children, overturned desks and scattered schoolbags were the casualties from the class of ten-year-olds.

One girl had her legs severed, a boy had lost a hand, and another boy was lying on the floor with his head blown off.

“For two weeks afterwards none of the children would come back to school,” Mrs Sharhan said. “In the end I had to write letters to the parents pleading with them to send their children back so they could get an education.”

In the days after the attack, one of the first on a school in Baghdad, she would return home after a day’s teaching and lock herself in her bedroom to cry. Tears flowed as she recounted that dreadful day to The Times, although she proudly told of how Suad Hassanian, the girl who lost her legs, came back a few weeks later to take her exams.

Until recently, attacks on schools were not common, but violence is reaching such a frightening level that children are not safe even in class.

Figures released by the Iraq Ministry of Education show that 64 children have been killed and 57 injured in 417 attacks on schools since November. There are fears that sectarian attackers may have deliberately targeted schools, many of which are next to mosques, that are targets for bombs and rockets. Probably even more children have been killed on the way to or from school, by car bombs or stray bullets, which can make the school run a dice with death. Dozens of teachers have died.

The boy who died in the mortar blast at the Dijla school was Hassan Abdulamir, one of the brightest pupils at one of the best schools in Baghdad and the son of a shopkeeper who made a lot of sacrifices to make sure his boy would have a good chance in life. Essam Abdulamir, his father, said: “I thought I had worried about everything, about me being killed, about my wife being killed. I never thought my son would be killed at his school.”

Nobody can be sure who fired the mortar or why, but it was probably badly aimed by insurgents trying to hit a nearby Iraqi National Guard outpost.

Children are also targets for criminal kidnap gangs who snatch them for ransom, with 47 kidnapped since November. Not all are children of the rich.

Parents are so worried that some are beginning to stop their children attending classes. Most escort them to and from school and worry constantly about their safety. Playing outside and visiting friends is banned in many of Baghdad’s suburbs, and on days when Saddam Hussein is on trial, parents keep children indoors out of fear of car bombs.

Expensive schools are finding that their pupils are disappearing to less fashionable establishments as parents try to reduce the risk of their children being targeted by kidnappers looking for a lucrative victim. Teachers will hand pupils only to relatives that they know at the school gate.

For parents, the risk to their children can be their biggest problem.

Hussein Ali, 36, a wealthy father, said: “I am worried about my two sons all the time. In the summer holiday we kept them in the house. It is not just the money — what sort of psychological damage would it do to a child to be kidnapped?” Child experts are concerned that a generation of children may suffer long-term effects.

Roger Wright, a spokesman for Unicef, the children’s organisation, said: “The figures are extremely disturbing, but as well as children being killed and injured we are worried that Iraq’s children are becoming immune to seeing violence, guns and the aftermath of bombings.

“This is going to have long-term effects on their mental stability. Iraqi children are commonly showing signs of trauma — nightmares, anxiety, reclusiveness. It must be terrible for Iraqi parents at the moment.”

Assim al-Faris, 42, another father, said that four children had been kidnapped from his daughter’s school.

He said: “Now she talks about nothing but kidnapping. It has become the easiest way to get money, to target kids who can’t resist and who are the easiest target.”

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