JERUSALEM — Israeli police stormed into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City early Wednesday, firing stun grenades at Palestinian youths who hurled stones and firecrackers at them in a burst of violence during a sensitive holiday season. Palestinian militants in Gaza responded with rocket fire on southern Israel, prompting repeated Israeli airstrikes.
The fighting, coming as Muslims mark the holiday month of Ramadan and Jews prepare to begin the Passover festival on Wednesday evening, raised fears of a wider conflagration.
The mosque sits in a sensitive hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam and is typically packed with worshippers during Ramadan. The spot, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is also the holiest site in Judaism, revered as the location of the biblical Jewish temples. The conflicting claims have spilled over to violence before, most recently a bloody 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic military group that rules Gaza.
By early morning, the Jerusalem compound had quieted down. A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said the Palestinian Authority was in contact with officials in Egypt, Jordan, the United States and the United Nations to de-escalate tensions.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that 50 people were injured. Separately, the Israeli military said one soldier was shot in the occupied West Bank.
Crowds of Palestinians gathered around a police station in Jerusalem on Wednesday, waiting anxiously for their loved ones — many of them wearing blood-stained shirts and limping on bandaged legs — to trickle out of detention.
People leaving detention said police used batons, chairs, rifles and whatever else they could find to strike Palestinians, including women and children, who responded by setting off firecrackers and hurling stones. Outside the mosque’s gate, police dispersed crowds of young men with stun grenades and rubber bullets.
Israeli police said they were not immediately able to confirm the reports and videos showing officers beating Palestinians.
Amin Risheq, a 19-year-old from east Jerusalem, lifted his bloodied shirt to show his worried mother red blotches all over his back and his bandaged arm, which he said was struck by a tear gas canister. He said that after being beaten and forced to lay on the floor of the mosque with dozens of others, his hands zip-tied behind his back, he was taken to the police station where he said he did not have access to a toilet, medical attention or water for over six hours. “They treated us like animals,” he said.
Since Ramadan began March 22, scores of Muslim worshippers have repeatedly tried to stay overnight in the mosque, a practice that is typically permitted only during the last 10 days of the monthlong holiday. Israeli police have entered nightly to evict the worshippers, stirring tensions with young Palestinians who demand to pray at the holy site until dawn.
Tensions over control of the holy site have been heightened by calls from Jewish ultranationalists to carry out a ritual slaughter of a goat in the compound, imitating the ancient ritual sacrifice performed on Passover in biblical times. Israel bars ritual slaughter on the site, but calls by Jewish extremists to revive the practice, including offers of cash rewards to anyone who even attempts to bring an animal into the compound, have amplified fears among Muslims that Israel is plotting to take over the site. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is committed to preserving the status quo at the compound.
After some 80,000 worshippers attended evening prayers at the mosque on Tuesday, hundreds of Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the mosque overnight to pray. Some said they were determined to stay the night to ensure religious Jews didn’t carry out animal sacrifices at the site. After they refused to leave, Israeli police moved into the mosque, descending on Palestinians with batons.
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