ISRAELI police have attacked dozens of worshippers in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound injuring seven people, according to witnesses.
The raid took place before dawn on Wednesday with Israeli police claiming they were responding to “rioting”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported injuries but did not elaborate on how many people were hurt. It said in a statement that Israeli forces were preventing its medics from reaching Al-Aqsa.
“I was sitting on a chair reciting (Qur’an),” an elderly woman told the Reuters news agency while sitting outside the mosque, struggling to catch her breath. “They hurled stun grenades, one of them hit my chest,” she said as she began to cry.
Israeli police said in a statement that they were forced to enter the compound after “masked agitators” locked themselves inside the mosque with fireworks, sticks and stones.
“When the police entered, stones were thrown at them and fireworks were fired from inside the mosque by a large group of agitators,” the statement said, adding that a police officer was wounded in the leg.
Tension has already been high in occupied East Jerusalem and West Bank for months. There are fears of further violence as important religious festivals – the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover – converge.
Palestinian groups condemned the latest attacks on worshippers, which they described as a crime.
“We warn the occupation against crossing red lines at holy sites, which will lead to a big explosion,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Jordan, which acts as custodian of Jerusalem’s Christian and Muslim holy sites under a status quo arrangement in place since the 1967 war, condemned Israel’s “flagrant” storming of the compound.
