Barely a month after children all over the country rang peace bells, a week after they celebrated a subdued Dasai with families, and just before sisters and brothers were getting ready to celebrate Tihar came the horrific story of four school children killed in a Maoist-Army firefight in Doti.

What happened at the Sharada Higher Secondary School in Mudbhara on Tuesday afternoon is symbolic of the utter waste of this conflict. No war is sane, but even by the senseless standards of these mad times, Mudhbara was a descent into hell. How many Doramabas, Mudbaras, Jogimaras do we need before we regain our senses? How many more Dipak Gurungs, Sushila Joshis, Harina Bhandaris, Yadunath Joshis, and Mandari BKs need to be killed before they end this lunacy?

A human rights organisation has already returned from an on-site inspection in Doti, the army's Human rights Cell will no doubt conduct its own investigation into this 'collateral damage', and the two sides bearing arms will predictably blame each other for provoking the firefight. The parents, brothers, sisters and relatives of Sushila, Harina, Yadunath and Mandira will not really care about the technical details. Their loved ones are dead. They will be grieving just as hundreds of relatives of the more than 168 Nepalis who have been killed at the hands of fellow Nepalis in this blood-soaked week of human sacrifices.

Nepal stopped being a zone of peace long ago. That is why we implored that at least schools and children be left alone. But that was obviously too much to ask. What were the Maoists doing in Mudbhara forcing grade 5-10 students to watch their cultural revolution entertainment, anyway? Is that how you build support for your movement: by going house to house with socket bombs in your shoulder bag, forcing students to sit through your song-and-dance routine?

The army's intelligence is obviously improving: at least they can now tell that the Maoists are holding cultural programmes in high schools. But why were they so easily provoked to go in with their guns blazing into classrooms when it would have been obvious to anyone that the rebels would slip in among the students? We\'re not military types, but wasn\'t there a way to keep the school under surveillance, wait till the Maoists left and follow them to their lairs? Why this trigger happiness?

Children have a right to education. But first they have a right to life. The state has a responsibility to protect them, not just by ensuring they are not caught in the crossfire, but also by abandoning militarisation and working towards a negotiated solution.

And do the Maoists need any more proof that a revolution devours children? Do they still need to be convinced that there are avenues other than deaths, threats, and terror to achieve the same ends? There is no need to destroy Nepal in order to save it.

Whatever their excuses, it doesn't really matter now who fired first at Mudbhara. All we ask is: if you have to kill each other please don\'t kill the children and the innocents.