Lessons under threat: al-Mughayyir school tightens security after three pupils killed

On the first day of the new school year the head teacher of al-Mughayyir boys school arrived before dawn and passed newly installed barbed wire and reinforced gates around the compound. Six people have been killed in al-Mughayyir this year, including 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan, who was shot outside the school gates in April.

English teacher Waheed Abu Naem said two small pupils ran into his classroom to warn that settlers were near the school wall; as he tried to move students inside the gate a settler fired toward them. Mobile phone footage captured the moment Aws was shot, and Waheed said Aws had a bullet wound to the head.

Since April the village has seen more casualties: over the summer two more pupils were shot dead by Israeli forces during settler attacks and incursions, and a 19-year-old who had just left school was also killed. The Israeli military said its forces had responded to instigators of "a violent riot"; Israeli media reported the reservist involved in the April shooting was suspended and an investigation opened.

The school sits on the edge of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, increasingly surrounded by settler outposts and often blocked by Israeli forces operating an ad-hoc checkpoint at the entrance. To reassure parents the head teacher put up a long barbed-wire fence and reinforced the gates; ambulance crews are stationed on the road outside and several parents volunteer to stand at the gate all day.

Teachers repeatedly instructed pupils not to shout, approach or react if soldiers or settlers approach. About an hour after lessons began, pupils saw settlers driving sheep a few hundred metres from the school with Israeli soldiers nearby; another settler with sheep appeared minutes later. Ambulance driver Hadi al-Naasan said Israeli forces' behaviour has shifted over the past year and that the rise in deaths and injuries in al-Mughayyir this year reflects that.

The newsroom asked the Israeli army for a response to the allegations in this report but said it could not provide one before publication. All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law; many small ad-hoc settler outposts around al-Mughayyir are illegal under Israeli law as well.