'Your goal is to kill the most innocent civilians' teacher tells her class

AN AUSTRALIAN high school teacher who assigned her class to plan a terrorist attack that would kill as many innocent people as possible had no intent to promote terrorism, education officials said yesterday.

The 15- to 16-year-old pupils at Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School in the state of Western Australia were given the assignment last week in a class on contemporary conflict and terrorism.

Principal Terry Martino said he withdrew the assignment as soon as he heard of it.

The pupils were asked to pretend they were terrorists releasing a chemical or biological agent on "an unsuspecting Australian community", according to a copy of the assignment received by a local newspaper.

"Your goal is to kill the MOST innocent civilians in order to get your message across," the assignment read.

Grades were to be allocated based on pupils' ability to analyse information on chemical and biological warfare and apply it to a real-life scenario.