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JERUSALEM / GAZA (REUTERS) – Israeli soldiers entered Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third most sacred shrine in Islam, and made arrests on Friday, July 27. The rare raid, on a site that is an emblem of Palestinian hopes and a frequent catalyst for their conflict with Israel, came as Gaza doctors said the Israeli army shootings killed two people. A police spokesman said the soldiers had been sent to al-Aqsa after suspects barricaded themselves after clashes in the surrounding compound, during which masked men threw firecrackers from portable cans.
There was no immediate word of any violence in the mosque, whose older worshipers said that they had been allowed to go out after being searched.
Witnesses later saw about 20 young men detained by the police, and later said the prayers of the mosque resumed.
Police put the number of arrests at 24, and said that four of its officers were injured in the fray. "The ongoing Israeli attacks on occupied Jerusalem will increase tensions and drag the region into a religious war against which we have long warned," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said.
The Al Aqsa complex, also revered by Jews as a remnant of their two ancient temples, was among the areas that Israel captured in a 1967 war with Jordan, which retains a role stewardship at the mosque. Gaza, the doctors said that a man and a boy of 14 years were killed and dozens wounded by the army, bringing to 154 the number of Palestinian deaths during the demonstrations launched on March 30 to demand rights over lands lost to Israel during the 1948 war.
The deceased, 43-year-old Ghazi Abu Mustafa, was taken to a hospital tent where his wife, a nurse, was working. Collapsed when she discovered it among the victims, […]
Israeli Mi The soldiers opened fire to restrain thousands of Palestinians, some of whom threw stones and rolled tires burning on the border fence to try to sabotage it.
Israel says its deadly tactics are necessary to prevent armed infiltration and accuses Islamist Hamas leaders of encouraging disruption to divert attention from their governance problems under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade. Hamas denies it.
While several foreign powers blamed Israel for its management of Gaza, the United States echoed its blame for Hamas. In the past week, one Israeli soldier was killed and another wounded by Gaza snipers and seven Hamas men died in air strikes.
Israel lost farmland and forests burned by kites and helium balloons, loaded with incendiary material and flew over Gaza. The Israelis reacted by preventing the entry of non-essential commercial goods into Gaza.
In the occupied West Bank, another territory where Palestinians want independence, a Tiger-haired Palestinian stabbed a Jewish settler and wounded two more on Thursday before being shot and killed. Locals said Israeli troops, who attacked the village of the assailant on Friday, injured a man
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