Students have returned to school in a bombed-out building with no windows, doors, desks, chairs or electricity, in a front-line town divided by the Assad regime and opposition forces in northwestern Syria's Tadif.

Girls carrying pink backpacks play alongside boys with blue ones in the courtyard of their school in Tadif, some 32 kilometers (20 miles) east of Aleppo city.

Heavily damaged during Syria's more than a decadelong war, Tadif lies on what has turned into a quiet front line between regime forces and Ankara-backed opposition.

Most of the eight schools in the area have been completely destroyed.

But one reopened this week, welcoming around 300 students from the opposition-held area of Tadif.

In a dark makeshift classroom, children were gathered for their mathematics class.

"Because of the war, most of the schools in the city have been destroyed and we cannot repair them," math teacher Salah al-Khamis told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Mohamed al-Akil, the mayor of Tadif and a father of two, said he had sent his own children to school in a nearby village.

"We can only accommodate 300 pupils out of 3,000," he said.

Tadif's makeshift school is one of many desperate attempts to provide education in Syria's embattled northwest, where 44% of school-aged children do not have access to education, according to the United Nations.

Children make up more than half of the region's population of more than 4 million, the U.N. says.

"Hundreds of schools have been damaged or destroyed by bombing and far too many children remain out of school," Mark Cutts, U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, said.