Israeli army today sealed off the entrances to Tuqu‘ town, south of Bethlehem, according to a local source.

Mustafa al-Badn, a local activist, said that the soldiers closed the metal gates at the western and northern entrances of the town.

He added that the gun-toting soldiers chased students on their way to their school, close to the northern entrance of the town, and briefly held a number of them.

Israel severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of approximately 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads and various other physical obstructions.

Closures besides to other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 55-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

SOURCE: PALESTINE NEWS & INFO AGENCY