Al Aqsa Mosque stormed

Jerusalem : Israeli troopers entered Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest shrine in Islam, and carried out arrests yesterday. The rare raid, on a site that is an emblem of Palestinians’ statehood hopes came as medics in Gaza said Israeli army gunfire killed two people - including a boy - during a weekly border protest. 

A police spokesman said the troopers were sent into Al Aqsa after suspects who had barricaded themselves in after running confrontations in the surrounding compound. There was no immediate word of any violence in the mosque, whose older male worshippers said they had been allowed to exit after being searched. Witnesses later saw around 20 younger men detained by police, and said mosque prayers later resumed. Police put the number of arrests at 24, and said four of its officers were injured in the melee. Palestinian authorities said dozens of people were hurt by Israeli police stun grenades. 

“The continued Israeli attacks against occupied Jerusalem will increase tensions and will drag the region into a religious war that we have long warned against,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s office said in a statement. In Gaza, medics said a man and a 14-year-old boy were killed and dozens wounded by army fire, bringing to 154 the Palestinian death toll during demonstrations launched on March 30 to demand rights to land lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its founding. The dead man, 43-year-old Ghazi Abu Mustafa, was brought to a hospital tent staffed by his wife, a medic, who collapsed when she discovered him among the casualties, her colleagues said.