LIFE returned to normal for residents and students of four schools in the Whitley Road area on Friday after the police and military pulled out from the wooded estate overnight on Thursday.

A teacher at the Singapore Chinese Girls School, one of the four institutions that found themselves within a cordon all of Thursday, said it was completely different on Friday.

'The mood was buoyant and lessons went on as usual,' she said.

Brother Michael Broughton, Brother President of Saint Joseph's Instituition also said that everything returned to normal at the all-boys' school on Friday.

A complete contrast to the day earlier, when traffic slowed to a crawl, with the usual morning rush hour made worse with every vehicle being checked as they left the area bounded by Whitley Road and Dunearn Road.

A line of police vehicles also took up stretches of the left most lane of Dunearn Road.

Read the full report in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.