In an assault on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli troops attack worshipers.

 

Palestinians have denounced Israeli authorities’ use of stun grenades inside the mosque to arrest worshipers and launch stun grenades.

Witnesses said that Israeli police violently raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem before daybreak and assaulted and detained Palestinian worshipers.

According to Palestinian sources, at least 400 Palestinians were detained by Israel on Wednesday and are still there. They are being detained at Atarot, in occupied East Jerusalem, in a police station.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said that Israeli authorities assaulted worshipers with batons and guns and used excessive force, including tear gas and stun grenades, injuring them by suffocating them.

Twelve injuries, including three hospital transfers, were recorded by the Palestinian Red Crescent. In a statement, it said that Israeli soldiers had stopped its medical staff from getting to Al-Aqsa.

The raids continued until Wednesday morning when Israeli soldiers were once again spotted accosting, ejecting, and stopping Palestinians from worshipping within the mosque enclosure before allowing Jews in under police cover. For more details.

An elderly lady, sitting outside the mosque and gasping for air, told the news agency Reuters, “I was seated on a chair reciting [the Quran].” She cried out, “They threw stun grenades, and one of them struck my chest.”

Israeli police said in a statement that “masked agitators” had barricaded themselves inside the mosque with fireworks, sticks, and stones before compelling Israeli police to enter the vicinity.

The statement said that a police officer was hurt in the leg and stated that as the police entered, “stones were hurled at them and fireworks were launched from within the mosque by a big gathering of agitators.”

Tension has already been at an all-time high in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem for months. Since two significant religious holidays, the Jewish Passover and the Muslim Ramadan, Concerns of an upsurge in violence coexist.

The assaults were anticipated as appeals on social media encouraging Palestinians to visit Al-Aqsa and “protect it from the occupation” led to speculation about their timing.

Many Jews are anticipated to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex during regular non-Muslim visitation hours.

While Jews are not permitted to worship within the enclosure, Ghoneim stated from occupied East Jerusalem that “those who regularly come are nationalists with extremely conservative views”

The latest attacks on worshippers were condemned by Palestinian groups as crimes.

In a statement, Mohammad Shtayyeh, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, stated, “What occurred in Jerusalem is a terrible crime against the believers. We have the right to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, not with the [Israeli] occupation’s consent.

Al-Aqsa belongs to all Arabs and Muslims, including the Palestinians, and its plundering is a spark for a revolution against the occupation, he said Since the 1967 conflict, Jordan has served as the guardian of the Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Jordan has denounced Israel’s “flagrant” invasion of the complex.

In the meanwhile, Israel was ordered to stop its “blatant assault” on Al-Aqsa pilgrims by Egypt’s foreign ministry.

“A crime without precedent.”

Cross-border wars have in the past been fatally sparked by disputes over Al-Aqsa, the third-holiest shrine in Islam and the holiest place in Judaism (where it is known as the Temple Mount). between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas authorities, the most recent of which took place in 2021.

As “an unparalleled atrocity,” the most recent raid was denounced by Hamas, who also urged Palestinians in the West Bank to “move en masse to the Al-Aqsa mosque to protect it.”

Northern Gaza fired several rockets toward Israel after the massacre at Al-Aqsa.

The aerial defense system surrounding the southern Israeli city of Sderot reportedly intercepted five missiles, while four more were reported to have fallen in unpopulated regions, according to the Israeli army.

 In Gaza, Israeli aircraft struck many locations in Gaza, hitting targets at a “military station” west of the city and a location in the center of the strip the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Several protesters burned tires in the streets of Gaza throughout the night.

They were cited as stating, “We swear to defend and maintain the Al-Aqsa mosque,” by the AFP news agency.

Al-Aqsa is one of the few national symbols that the Palestinians still claim some kind of sovereignty over. They worry, too, that Jewish organizations may gradually encroach, as they did in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, also called the Cave of the Patriarchs, where half of the mosque was turned into a synagogue in 1967.

The far-right Israeli organizations that seek to destroy the Islamic buildings in the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex and replace them with a Jewish temple also cause concern for the Palestinians.