The Israeli reservist shot 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan in the head simply outside the western gate of the Mughayyir boys’ secondary school, where he was studying in ninth grade.Aws collapsed instantly, bleeding heavily. More shots sounded out as his buddies ran to his side, picked up his now-limp body and hurried him out of the line of fire, their path along the school wall marked by a path of their schoolmate’s blood.Footage from inside
the structure showed terrified kids and instructors bent in stairwells, shouting at others to come down. Another video recorded the shooter, a reservist in partial military uniform, taking aim at the school from the hillside above. Kids and instructors crouch in stairwell as shots ring out– video A couple of minutes later the exact same man eliminated the more youthful sibling of an English instructor Waheed Abu Naim, whose household live next to the school. Jihad Abu Naim was 36; his partner is greatly pregnant with the couple’s first kid, a girl due this month.Aws and Abu
Naim were shot dead on 21 April amidst a wave of inhabitant violence in the occupied West Bank, much of which has actually targeted schools and trainees in the territory.Palestinian kids prepare a makeshift memorial for their killed good friend Aws Hamdi Naasan, 14, who was shot and killed by an Israeli inhabitant in partial uniform near the kids school in Mughayyir, West Bank. Picture: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian Mughayyir, a village of about 3,000 people nestled
in the rolling hills north-east of Ramallah, has been targeted for many years. Aws’s father, Hamdi al-Naasan, was eliminated in January 2019, shot in the back by a settler as he tried to save an injured neighbour.Aws was just in 3rd grade at the time, and his instructors devoted additional attention
to the young kid in the years that followed.”We tried to make Aws feel safe, and ensure he had some rules in his life, to protect 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 instructors weighed up hopes for their kids’s futures versus immediate fears for their lives.”We wish to return to school, however our households are stressed,”stated Ahmed Abu Ali, a friend and classmate of the murdered teenager.A chart showing the variety of Palestinian civilians eliminated in the West BankThe rate at which Palestinian civilians have been killed has
increased recently Education is under attack throughout occupied Palestine. The scenario is most severe 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 eliminated at least 792 teachers and 18,639 trainees, according to the UN, and damaged or destroyed 9 out of 10 school buildings.But trainees 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 couple of hours after Aws was killed outside his school, inhabitants assaulted and demolished a British-and European-funded school for Palestinian children in a town 25 miles to the north.In Hammamat al-Maleh, in the northern Jordan valley, settlers used bulldozers to take down four classrooms, school toilets and the two playground areas into a stack of twisted metal and crumpled plastic, spread with destroyed 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 across the roadway to the school participated in by Palestinian
children from Umm al-Khair town, blocking students from crossing since then.”This course is not simply a road, it is the lifeline that connects our children to their education and to a sense of normal life, “said one homeowner, Tariq Hathaleen.”The purpose is clear to us: to pressure 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 been nearby settlers and Israeli forces, avoiding them from reaching their schools, in the village of Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, Hebron, West Bank. Picture: Mamoun Wazwaz/APAImages/Shutterstock When a group of grownups and kids from the village staged a sit-in demonstration at the fence, requiring access to their school, Israeli soldiers fired teargas at them.”These attacks on the education of Palestinian children are not separated events,”said James Elder, international representative
for Unicef. The effect of repeating, targeted attacks on
education”follows kids out of the classroom”, he added, impacting their home lives and sleep.Israeli forces have a history of interfering with education in Mughayyir.
A checkpoint frequently set up on the road listed below the kids’school terrifies and sidetracks students, homeowners said, and the soldiers staffing it sometimes block instructors who live outside the village from coming to teach their classes.Palestinian students collect near a fence installed by Israeli inhabitants in their method
to school in the West Bank. Picture: Yosri Aljamal/Reuters A surge of lethal Israeli attacks on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank this spring also put instructors on alert for new threats to their pupils.So when two inhabitants and four masked soldiers were spotted walking towards the school not long after midday on 21 April, instructors confined trainees into the substance, shut the main gate and sent a message to parents and neighbours: armed Israelis were near the school, they should come collect their children.Waheed Abu Naim went to try to speak with the Israelis, asking in English and Arabic why they had actually come. Only one reacted, stating “return” in Arabic, and raising his gun.
The message was clear.” Then I understood they had pertained to make issues, so I returned to the school to get the kids under control,”he said.As instructors gotten ready for an attack, the shooter climbed the hillside to a position with a clear line of vision towards the western side of the school.A handful of trainees were still in the street, and Abu Naim tried to order them to safety as the reservist intended his weapon at the kids. “I was screaming to them ‘go inside, he will eliminate you’. “Moments later on shots called out and Aws folded to the ground.Teachers and fellow trainees carried him round the corner to administer emergency treatment, and drive him to a clinic, however he had passed away before he reached medical professionals.< 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"/ > Minute fourteen-year old shot in head by Israeli reservist– video
Taleb al-Naasan, his paternal grandpa, stated:”He was a respectful kid, with excellent manners, who just wished to grow up and have a family of his
own, a regular life.” Aws leaves a doubly bereaved family, consisting of 2 siblings and a younger brother.The next day households buried their dead and Israeli forces robbed the village, shooting teargas and stun grenades at Palestinian homes for half an hour.The rights group B’Tselem stated the shooting in Mughayyir fitted a”constant pattern”of
deadly attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleaning.”Israeli militias rob Palestinian towns in order to provoke conflict and generate an action, which they then utilize as a pretext for deadly gunfire and fear attacks on locals trying to defend their homes,” the group said.These attacks are “performed with the stated objective of forcibly displacing countless Palestinian residents from their homes”. The Israeli armed force said the gunman was a reservist, who stepped out of his vehicle and opened fire after stones were thrown at the vehicle. Video footage of the
attack, and bloodstains on the road, showed the shooter was several hundred metres from the nearby roadway when he killed Aws.The military spokesperson
likewise said soldiers did not accompany the reservist at the time of the killing, and reached the area later on.