BETHLEHEM, Israeli forces Thursday morning stormed a school in Tuqu‘ town, south of Bethlehem city, according to a local source.

The town mayor, Tayseer Abu Mefreh, said that the gun-toting soldiers surrounded the school campus, close to the northern entrance of the southern West Bank town, from al, directions before storming it.

Bassam Jaber, an official from the Education Ministry, said that the soldiers briefly held the school principal and the teachers.

In late September, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy died after falling from a significant height while running away from Israeli soldiers in the town.

Rayyan Yaser Suleiman was coming home from school with other pupils in the town when troops gave chase, and he died on the spot from fear, his father Yasser said.

A medical official who inspected the boy’s body told Reuters that it bore no sign of physical trauma and that the death appeared consistent with heart failure.

Attacks on education by Israeli military forces and Israeli settlers in the Palestine constitute grave violations of children’s rights to education and development. These attacks are particularly prevalent in the most vulnerable areas of the West Bank – Area C, H2 and Jerusalem.

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency