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Photo:
A makeshift road excavated by locals in the blockaded village of Yatta (MaanImages/Bassam Rumi) published by Maan News
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HEBRON (Ma’an) -- Residents of the town of Yatta south of the city of Hebron have been forced to commute via rugged dirt roads for eleven consecutive days, as Israeli forces continued to block all exits and side roads connecting the town to the rest of occupied West Bank, amid heavy Israeli presence across the district of Hebron and blockades imposed on at least two other villages of the district.

A Ma’an reporter in Yatta on Monday morning said that searching for a path to leave the town took almost two hours of trial and error.

Residents have been calling ahead to neighbors to see what route they used to connect to the main road earlier that day, only to find the path already blocked off by rocks and earth mounds by the time they reached it -- and locals would start to spread the word about other open paths, which have been built on the fly by locals amid the Israeli siege.
“The people of Yatta are in a race against Israeli bulldozers,” the Ma’an reporter said.

Israeli forces imposed a general closure on Hebron, the largest and most populous district in the occupied West Bank, amid a widespread manhunt for gunmen in two shooting incident in the district.

In the wake of a fatal shooting attack near the illegal Israeli settlement of Otniel in Hebron on July 1, Yatta was sealed. The attack occurred within 48 hours of a deadly stabbing attack and an alleged attack carried out by residents of the village of Bani Naim who were immediately shot dead.
Bani Naim has also been completely sealed.

On Saturday night, an Israeli was shot and injured in his car near the Hebron-area settlement Teqoa, after which the village of Sair was also placed under blockade.

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