Ramallah, October 16 (RHC)-- A series of fierce clashes have broken out between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces after the Tel Aviv regime ordered the closure of a Palestinian school in the occupied West Bank.

The clashes erupted after students tried to enter the school alongside some local officials in the town of Sawiyah, south of Nablus, on Monday morning.

Israeli troops and police fired tear gas at protesters, including into the school premises.  The Palestinian Red Crescent said that at least four people were hit by rubber bullets, with a number of others affected by tear gas.  An AFP photographer was among those injured in the clashes.

The school serves the Palestinian villages of as-Sawiya and al-Lubban south of Nablus and is located on a main road through the West Bank.

Samer Ewass, a village official, said they were protesting the Israeli decision.  "We reject this decision," Ewass said, adding: "These children have a right to education, they have a right to sit in school like any child in any country."

The Israeli military on Sunday issued an order for the school to be closed.  The Israeli army blamed students for throwing stones at a nearby major road used by its forces and Israeli settlers.

In late August, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an international organization said that Palestinian children in the occupied territories were simply being denied education as the Israeli regime kept on with the much-blamed policy of demolishing their newly constructed schools.

The NRC says some 55 schools in the occupied West Bank are threatened with demolition and stop-work orders by Israeli authorities, most of them built with funding from the European Union member states and other donors.

The EU has already announced that some 100 structures, including homes, shelters, water networks and schools, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Many believe that the controversial demolition measures adopted by Tel Aviv are aimed at expelling more Palestinians from the West Bank.