REUTERS, Jerusalem

Dozens of Palestinian children have been unable to go to school in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this week because of barbed wire erected by Jewish settlers across the path they normally use.

Dozens of children tried on Monday to get to school in the small village of Umm al-Khair near Hebron for the first time since the US-Israeli war with Iran began. They found their way blocked by barbed wire which villagers said had been placed there by Israelis from the nearby Carmel settlement.

Khalil Hathaleen, head of the Umm al-Khair village council, said the barbed wire prevented children from the outskirts of the village taking their usual safe path through a valley to the school in the village centre.

Otherwise, he said, the children would have to walk along a road which he described as dangerous, because it passes closer to the settlement. “We insist on using the main path that our children have always taken,” he said, accusing Jewish settlers of trying to take over the land so that they can expand their settlement.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the barbed wire was part of a coordinated campaign by settlers and the Israeli military to intimidate Palestinians and drive them from their land in the West Bank, which it said amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.