It was a bizarre scene this morning; dozens of young boys

It was a bizarre scene this morning; dozens of young boys and girls walking along a track by a thicket of trees and a narrow irrigation canal, towards their school in Helmand province's Nad Ali district. One in every two carried fresh flowers they'd picked on their walk from the nearby villages. Just a few hundred metres beyond the thicket and the canal, however, Taliban-controlled villages cast a looming shadow over this string of government-controlled villages—the last line of defence to the west of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Photo: @andrewquilty / @oculi / @everydayasia. 29.3.2016. #Helmand #Afghanistan