Dozens injured as Israel attacks Al-aqsa Mosque worshippers
Dozens of Palestinians were injured after Israeli forces clashed with them outside the Old City of Al-quds on Saturday as tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers prayed at the nearby Al-aqsa Mosque.
Officers on horseback and in riot gear used stun grenades and water cannons to disperse Palestinians who threw stones, lit fires and tore down barricades in the streets leading to the walled Old City gates.
Some 100 Palestinians were wounded in Saturday’s overnight clashes, many hit by rubber bullets and stun grenades, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, AFP reported.
Thousands of Palestinians packed Al-aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, to hold special Ramadan prayers.
Israeli forces set up roadblocks to limit access to the Old City, effectively preventing hundreds more from joining the prayers.
A bus heading to East Al-quds was stopped and some Palestinians were detained for questioning, while hundreds of Palestinians marched on highways to the Holy City.
“They want to stop us from going to Al-aqsa,” said Ali al-komani, 40, outside the holy site.
“They do not want us to pray. There is a fight every day, every day there are clashes. Every day there are troubles,” Mahmoud al-marbua, 27, told Reuters near the Old City’s Damascus Gate. Pointing to Israeli forces chasing youths and firing thunder-flashes at them, he added, “Look how they are firing at us. How can we live?”
Tensions have mounted in the city throughout the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, amid growing anger over the potential eviction of Palestinians from Alquds
homes on land claimed by Israeli settlers.
On Friday, Israeli forces fired rubber bullets and stun grenades toward rock-hurling Palestinian youths.
At least 205 Palestinians were injured in Friday’s confrontations, which drew international condemnations and calls for calm.
On Sunday, Pope Francis called for an end to the clashes.
“Violence only generates violence. Let’s stop these clashes,” he said. “I pray so that this might be a place of encounter and not violent clashes, a place of prayer and of peace.”
“We salute the people of Al-aqsa, who oppose the arrogance of the Zionists and we call on our people in Palestine to support their brothers by all means,” Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior official of the Hamas resistance movement that governs the Gaza Strip, said on Twitter.
Attack on Gaza
In the Gaza Strip, hundreds of protesters gathered along the fence where Israeli troops fired tear gas grenades at them.
An Israeli F-16 fighter jet bombed the central Gaza Strip and the regime’s military has fired artillery shells at the besieged coastal enclave, Press TV reported.
The warplane struck two sites on Sunday, destroying them and damaging nearby property, Palestinian media reported.
Additionally on Sunday, the Israeli military fired two artillery shells toward east of Deir al-balah city in the Gaza Strip, with no casualties.
The Israeli military said it had carried out a strike on a Gaza military post belonging to Hamas in response to an alleged rocket attack from the coastal strip into southern occupied territories.