Gaza rockets, Israel strikes stoke new Jerusalem clashes
JERUSALEM: Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and Israeli warplanes exchanged fire Thursday in the biggest escalation in months, followed by fresh violence at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque.
Israel carried out air strikes in central Gaza after midnight, hours after a rocket fired by militants hit the garden of a house in southern Israel - the first such fire to hit the Jewish state since January. The military said it had hit an underground rocket factory, prompting another volley of rockets from the impoverished territory, run by Islamist movement Hamas.
The exchanges come after nearly a month of deadly violence focused on Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Palestinians have been outraged by repeated visits by Israeli Jews to the site, the third-holiest in Islam and the holiest in Judaism.
By long-standing convention, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray there.
On Thursday morning, Israeli police fired tear gas and multiple stun grenades inside the compound, AFP journalists reported.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that over the past week Israeli forces had “forcefully removed worshippers” from the mosque, “using rubber-coated metal bullets, batons, tear gas canisters and pepper spray in enclosed spaces”.
It said it had treated 202 people wounded in the violence since last Friday.
Israeli police however accused dozens of “rioters” of throwing stones and petrol bombs from the mosque and “stopping Muslim worshippers from entering the mosque”.
Seven Palestinians from east Jerusalem were arrested in connection with “violent incidents” on Wednesday, the police said.