Soldiers help celebrate Sadr City school renovation

Courtesy of Multi-National Force - Iraq

Soldiers help celebrate Sadr City school renovation

U.S. Soldiers and Iraqi National Police officers talk to students at the Yarmook Girl's School in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood during a visit to the school to see improvements made during a recent renovation effort sponsored by the Iraqi Government, the INP, and the U.S. military. Photo taken by SGT Mike Pryor, 2nd BCT, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs.

BAGHDAD — When students at the Yarmook Girl's School in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood returned from summer vacation last month, they found that their school had received an extreme makeover thanks to the government of Iraq and the U.S. Army.

U.S. Soldiers and Iraqi National Police visited the recently renovated school Oct. 22, to see the improvements and hand out backpacks and soccer balls to the students.

The renovations to the school totaled $200,000 of improvements, including a new roof, a new lighting system, repairs to cracks in the pavement and stairs, and a paint job, said Glen Allen, Va., native Capt. Alex Carter, a U.S. Army Civil Affairs team chief who helped oversee the project.

Nine other schools in Sadr City also have been renovated over the past few months, as part of the same program that refurbished the Yarmook Girl's School, Carter said. The school improvement program was made possible by cooperation among the Ministry of Education, the local neighborhood councils, school officials, the Iraqi National Police, and the U.S. Army's 1st Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, which operates in the Sadr City area, he said.

"What makes this special to me is that this really validates how effective we are working with the Iraqi Police in Sadr City," Carter said.

The top Iraqi Police official present at the school visit, Brig. Gen. Ali Ibrahim Daboun, commander of 8th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi National Police Division, said he also was pleased by cooperation between the Iraqi government, the Iraqi Security Forces, and the U.S. military.

He said he hopes that the school improvement program would show the 2.5 million residents of Sadr City that they are a priority of the Iraqi government.

"In the past, they were neglected, but the new government will serve them," he said. (Story by SGT Mike Pryor, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

In other recent developments around Iraq:

•           A concerned citizen led Coalition Forces to a large weapons cache yesterday in a home in Sa’ada Village, Iraq. This cache is one of the largest discoveries of explosively formed penetrators found in at one location in Iraq.

•           Coalition forces captured two wanted individuals and detained 19 suspected terrorists during operations Wednesday in central and northern parts of Iraq.

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