Israeli police announced Wednesday night that they had intervened inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem to evict “rioters” who had introduced “fireworks, sticks and stones.”
Denouncing “an unprecedented crime,” the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, called on Palestinians in the West Bank to “flock to the al-Aqsa Mosque to defend it.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported injuries without specifying the number. The organization said in a statement that Israeli forces were preventing emergency services from reaching the mosque, the Reuters news agency said.
“Sirens are wailing in southern Israel,” the Israeli army also tweeted. AFP reports that rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards the Jewish state.
Various acts of violence in recent years
Violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem has escalated in recent years, raising fears that tensions will escalate this month, when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coincides in part with the Jewish Passover holiday.
The friction on the esplanade of the mosques, a sacred place of Islam and Judaism, have
sparked violence in recent years.
In early January 2023, Itamar Ben Gvir, an Israeli far-right figure and Minister of National Security, paid a brief visit to the East Jerusalem Mosques Esplanade. The choice to go to this holy place, at the center of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, was seen as an alleged provocation by the Israeli executive.
Source: BFM TV
