Five pupils killed in a year at West Bank school besieged by settlers and soldiers, teacher testifies

Waheed Abu Naim teaches English at the boys' school in Al Mughayyir, a Palestinian village in the West Bank. He says he still loves the job, the students who shake his hand each morning at the gate. But the last year at that gate has also brought death.

In April, a gunman opened fire near the school playground and killed a 14-year-old pupil, according to Abu Naim's account given to the Guardian. As he rushed the boy to hospital, he learned his own brother had been killed at the same time. Four other students at the school have also died over the past year, though their names, dates, and the circumstances of their deaths were not detailed in the account.

The village itself has been squeezed. Abu Naim describes Al Mughayyir as now surrounded by settlers, with the military blocking every road out except one, which runs through a checkpoint. Teachers who live in neighboring villages cannot always reach the school because of the restrictions, he said.

"So it's a happy life," Abu Naim said of teaching, describing students who wait to greet him each morning, even as he described the killings that have followed.

Guardian senior Middle East correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison, who reported the account, said the outlet has tracked hundreds of children killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers over the past three years. Even against that backdrop, she said, there was something distinct about gunfire aimed at a school full of children.

Graham-Harrison told the Guardian's Today in Focus podcast that she does not expect the pattern to ease. She said she expects at least the same level of violence in the coming months, and likely an escalation.

The claims rest on Abu Naim's first-person testimony and Guardian reporting; the April shooting is the only incident detailed with a location, age, and month. The identities of the shooter, the dates and circumstances of the four other student deaths, and the scale of settler encroachment around the village have not been independently verified in the published record. No Israeli military or settler response is cited in the account.

What is documented is a school inside a closing perimeter: one road in, a checkpoint on it, and a teacher who buried a student and a brother on the same day.