The Israeli reservist shot 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan in the head just outside the western gate of the Mughayyir kids’ secondary school, where he was studying in ninth grade.Aws collapsed instantly, bleeding greatly. More shots rang out as his buddies went to his side, picked up his now-limp body and hurried him out of the line of fire, their course along the school wall marked by a trail of their classmate’s blood.Footage from inside
the building showed frightened children and instructors crouched in stairwells, yelling at others to get down. Another video caught the shooter, a reservist in partial military uniform, taking objective at the school from the hillside above. Children and teachers crouch in stairwell as shots sound out– video A couple of minutes later on the same guy eliminated the more youthful brother of an English teacher Waheed Abu Naim, whose family live beside the school. Jihad Abu Naim was 36; his better half is greatly pregnant with the couple’s very first child, a girl due this month.Aws and Abu
Naim were shot dead on 21 April amid a wave of inhabitant violence in the occupied West Bank, much of which has actually targeted schools and trainees in the territory.Palestinian children prepare a makeshift memorial for their slain buddy Aws Hamdi Naasan, 14, who was shot and eliminated by an Israeli settler in partial uniform near the young boys school in Mughayyir, West Bank. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian Mughayyir, a town of about 3,000 people nestled
in the rolling hills north-east of Ramallah, has actually been targeted for several years. Aws’s father, Hamdi al-Naasan, was killed in January 2019, shot in the back by an inhabitant as he tried to save a hurt neighbour.Aws was only in 3rd grade at the time, and his instructors dedicated extra attention
to the young boy in the years that followed.”We attempted to make Aws feel safe, and ensure he had some rules in his life, to safeguard him from the effect of losing his dad, “said Waheed Abu Naim. “Then we lost him. “After the killings, classes in Mughayyir were suspended for a week as parents and teachers weighed up wish for their kids’s futures against immediate fears for their lives.”We wish to return to school, however our households are fretted,”stated Ahmed Abu Ali, a good friend and classmate of the killed teenager.A chart revealing the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the West BankThe rate at which Palestinian civilians have been killed has actually
increased over the last few years Education is under attack across occupied Palestine. The circumstance is most serious in Gaza, where more than 600,000 school-age kids are approaching the end of a third year without official in-person education. Israeli attacks there have actually killed a minimum of 792 instructors and 18,639 trainees, according to the UN, and damaged or ruined nine out of 10 school buildings.But students and schools are likewise targets of spiralling Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank, where there is an environment of near overall impunity for attacks on Palestinians.A few hours after Aws was killed outside his school, settlers attacked and demolished a British-and European-funded school for Palestinian children in a village 25 miles to the north.In Hammamat al-Maleh, in the northern Jordan valley, settlers utilized bulldozers to take down 4 class, school toilets and the two play area areas into a heap of twisted metal and crumpled plastic, scattered with messed up books.The French government, which contributed some of the financing to the school, has required settlement from the Israeli federal government for the destruction.In the south Hebron Hills, on 13 April Israeli settlers put razor-wire throughout the roadway to the school attended by Palestinian
children from Umm al-Khair town, blocking students from crossing ever since.”This course is not simply a road, it is the lifeline that connects our children to their education and to a sense of typical life, “stated one local, Tariq Hathaleen.”The function is clear to us: to press our community to leave our land, to daunt us through our kids.”Palestinian trainees continue their sit-in and
study on the side of a road, which has actually been nearby inhabitants and Israeli forces, preventing them from reaching their schools, in the town of Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, Hebron, West Bank. Picture: Mamoun Wazwaz/APAImages/Shutterstock When a group of grownups and kids from the town staged a sit-in protest at the fence, requiring access to their school, Israeli soldiers fired teargas at them.”These attacks on the education of Palestinian kids are not separated occurrences,”stated James Elder, international spokesperson
for Unicef. The effect of repeating, targeted attacks on
education”follows children out of the classroom”, he included, impacting their home lives and sleep.Israeli forces have a history of interrupting education in Mughayyir.
A checkpoint routinely set up on the road below the boys’school terrifies and distracts students, residents said, and the soldiers staffing it sometimes obstruct instructors who live outside the town from coming to teach their classes.Palestinian students collect near a fence set up by Israeli inhabitants in their way
to school in the West Bank. Picture: Yosri Aljamal/Reuters A rise of fatal Israeli attacks on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank this spring also put teachers on alert for new dangers to their pupils.So when two settlers and four masked soldiers were spotted strolling towards the school right after midday on 21 April, teachers confined students into the compound, shut the main gate and sent a message to moms and dads and neighbours: armed Israelis were near the school, they should come gather their children.Waheed Abu Naim went to attempt to speak with the Israelis, inquiring in English and Arabic why they had come. Just one reacted, stating “go back” in Arabic, and raising his weapon.
The message was clear.” Then I comprehended they had come to make issues, so I returned to the school to get the kids under control,”he said.As teachers prepared for an attack, the shooter went up the hillside to a position with a clear view towards the western side of the school.A handful of students were still in the street, and Abu Naim tried to buy them to security as the reservist intended his weapon at the kids. “I was yelling to them ‘go inside, he will kill you’. “Minutes later shots rang out and Aws folded to the ground.Teachers and fellow students carried him round the corner to administer emergency treatment, and drive him to a center, but he had actually died before he reached physicians.< img alt="Minute fourteen-year old shot in head by Israeli reservist-- video "src =" https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2026/04/30/Moment_fourteen-year_old_shot_in_head_by_Israeli_reservist___video--29c6d377-c65a-4fec-8962-bdfe848b24a3-1.0.0000000.jpg?width=120&dpr=1&s=none&crop=5%3A4"/ > Moment fourteen-year old shot in head by Israeli reservist– video
Taleb al-Naasan, his paternal grandpa, said:”He was a respectful kid, with good manners, who simply wanted to mature and have a family of his
own, a typical life.” Aws leaves behind a twice as bereaved household, including 2 siblings and a more youthful brother.The next day families buried their dead and Israeli forces raided the town, firing teargas and stun grenades at Palestinian homes for half an hour.The rights group B’Tselem said the shooting in Mughayyir fitted a”consistent pattern”of
deadly attacks by Israeli soldiers and inhabitants pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.”Israeli militias rob Palestinian towns in order to provoke conflict and generate an action, which they then use as a pretext for deadly shooting and fear attacks on residents trying to protect their homes,” the group said.These attacks are “performed with the stated objective of by force displacing thousands of Palestinian locals from their homes”. The Israeli armed force said the shooter was a reservist, who stepped out of his vehicle and opened fire after stones were tossed at the lorry. Video video footage of the
attack, and bloodstains on the road, revealed the shooter was numerous hundred metres from the nearby road when he eliminated Aws.The military representative
also said troops did not accompany the reservist at the time of the killing, and reached the location afterwards.