JERUSALEM/GAZA,: Israeli troopers entered Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest shrine in Islam, and carried out arrests on Friday in what police described as a pursuit of youths who had lobbed rocks and fireworks during clashes with its forces outside.
The rare raid, on a site that is an emblem of Palestinians’ statehood hopes and a frequent catalyst of their conflict with Israel, 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, during which masked men launched firecrackers from handheld canisters.
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. Muslim 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.
Al Aqsa compound, also revered by Jews as a vestige of their two ancient temples, was among areas Israel captured in a 1967 war with Jordan, which retains a stewardship role at the mosque.
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.
The Israeli military said troops opened fire to hold off thousands of Palestinians, some of whom threw rocks and rolled burning tires at the border fence in attempts to sabotage it.
Israel says its lethal tactics are needed to prevent armed infiltrations and accuses Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers of encouraging the disturbances to distract from their governance problems under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade. Hamas denies this.
While several foreign powers have censured Israel’s handling of Gaza, the United States has echoed its blaming of Hamas.
The four months of Gaza tensions have also seen cross-border shelling and gunfire exchange. Over the last week, an Israeli soldier was killed and another wounded by what the army said were Gaza snipers, and seven Hamas gunmen died in air strikes.
Israel has lost tracts of farmland and forests to fires set by kites and helium balloons, laden with incendiary material and flown over from Gaza. The Israelis have responded by preventing the entry of non-essential commercial goods to Gaza.
In the occupied West Bank, another territory where Palestinians want independence, a teeange Palestinian knifed a Jewish settler to death and wounded two others on Thursday before being shot and killed. Locals said that Israeli troops, raiding the assailant’s village on Friday, wounded a man.
Israeli police enter Al-Aqsa, new settler homes pledged after knife attack
Israeli police enter Al-Aqsa, new settler homes pledged after knife attack
- Troopers were sent into Al-Aqsa after suspects who had barricaded themselves in after running confrontations in the surrounding compound, say Israeli police
- In Gaza, medics said a man and a 14-year-old boy were killed and dozens wounded by army fire
Israel says South Africa ‘genocide’ case ‘totally divorced from facts’
“South Africa presents the court for the fourth time with a picture that is completely divorced from the facts and circumstances,” top lawyer Gilad Noam told the International Court of Justice.
Houthis say they downed US MQ-9 drone over Yemen’s Maareb
DUBAI: Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said they downed a US MQ9 drone on Thursday evening over the southeastern province of Maareb, the group’s military spokesman said on Friday.
The Houthis said they would release images and videos to support their claim and added that they had targeted the drone using a locally made surface to air missile.
2 killed in drug-smuggling attempt in Jordan
- Other suspected smugglers were injured during the security operation and fled back into Syria
- Jordan’s King Abdullah called on regional states to be vigilant
AMMAN: Two people were killed on Friday as Jordan’s security forces cracked down on an attempt to smuggle “large quantities” of drugs into its territory from Syria, state news agency PETRA reported.
Other suspected smugglers were injured during the security operation and fled back into Syria, while several firearms were seized, according to the report.
Jordan has recently intensified its patrols because of an alarming rise in attempts to smuggle drugs and weapons into the country.
Jordan’s King Abdullah called on regional states to be vigilant at the Arab League Summit in Manama on Thursday.
“We should confront armed militant groups who commit crimes above the law, especially smuggling drugs and arms which is what Jordan has been thwarting for years now,” he said.
Aid trucks begin moving ashore via Gaza pier, US says
- Trucks carrying badly needed aid for the Gaza Strip have rolled across a newly built US floating pier to Rafah
WASHINGTON: Trucks carrying badly needed aid for the Gaza Strip rolled across a newly built US floating pier into the besieged enclave for the first time Friday as Israeli restrictions on border crossings and heavy fighting hinder food and other supplies reaching people there.
The US military’s Central Command acknowledged the aid movement in a statement Friday, saying the first aid crossed into Gaza at 9 a.m. It said no American troops went ashore in the operation.
“This is an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor that is entirely humanitarian in nature, and will involve aid commodities donated by a number of countries and humanitarian organizations,” the command said.
The shipment is the first in an operation that American military officials anticipate could scale up to 150 truckloads a day entering the Gaza Strip as Israel presses in on the southern city of Rafah as its 7-month offensive against Gaza.
But the US and aid groups also warn that the pier project is not considered a substitute for land deliveries that could bring in all the food, water and fuel needed in Gaza. Before the war, more than 500 truckloads entered Gaza on an average day.
The operation’s success also remains tenuous due to the risk of militant attack, logistical hurdles and a growing shortage of fuel for the trucks to run due to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7. Israel’s offensive since then has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, local health officials say, while hundreds more have been killed in the West Bank.
Troops finished installing the floating pier on Thursday. Hours later, the Pentagon said that humanitarian aid would soon begin flowing and that no backups were expected in the distribution process, which is being coordinated by the United Nations.
The UN, however, said fuel deliveries brought through land routes have all but stopped and this will make it extremely difficult to bring the aid to Gaza’s people.
“We desperately need fuel,” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said. “It doesn’t matter how the aid comes, whether it’s by sea or whether by land, without fuel, aid won’t get to the people.”
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the issue of fuel deliveries comes up in all US conversations with the Israelis. She also said the plan is to begin slowly with the sea route and ramp up the truck deliveries over time as they work the kinks out of the system.
Aid agencies say they are running out of food in southern Gaza and fuel is dwindling, while the US Agency for International Development and the World Food Program say famine has taken hold in Gaza’s north.
Israel asserts it places no limits on the entry of humanitarian aid and blames the UN for delays in distributing goods entering Gaza. The UN says fighting, Israeli fire and chaotic security conditions have hindered delivery.
Under pressure from the US, Israel has in recent weeks opened a pair of crossings to deliver aid into hard-hit northern Gaza and said that a series of Hamas attacks on the main crossing, Kerem Shalom, have disrupted the flow of goods. There’s also been violent protests by Israelis disrupting aid shipments.
US President Joe Biden ordered the pier project, expected to cost $320 million. The boatloads of aid will be deposited at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City and then distributed by aid groups.
US officials said the initial shipment totaled as much as 500 tons of aid. The US has closely coordinated with Israel on how to protect the ships and personnel working on the beach.
But there are still questions on how aid groups will safely operate in Gaza to distribute food, said Sonali Korde, assistant to the administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which is helping with logistics.
“There is a very insecure operating environment” and aid groups are still struggling to get clearance for their planned movements in Gaza, Korde said.
The fear follows an Israeli strike last month that killed seven relief workers from World Central Kitchen whose trip had been coordinated with Israeli officials and the deaths of other aid personnel during the war.
Pentagon officials have made it clear that security conditions will be monitored closely and could prompt a shutdown of the maritime route, even just temporarily. Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, a deputy commander at the US military’s Central Command, told reporters Thursday that “we are confident in the ability of this security arrangement to protect those involved.”
Already, the site has been targeted by mortar fire during its construction, and Hamas has threatened to target any foreign forces who “occupy” the Gaza Strip.
Biden has made it clear that there will be no US forces on the ground in Gaza, so third-country contractors will drive the trucks onto the shore. Cooper said “the United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution into Gaza.”
The World Food Program will be the UN agency handling the aid, officials said.
Israeli forces are in charge of security on shore, but there are also two US Navy warships nearby that can protect US troops and others.
The aid for the sea route is collected and inspected in Cyprus, then loaded onto ships and taken about 200 miles (320 kilometers) to a large floating pier built by the US off the Gaza coast. There, the pallets are transferred onto the trucks that then drive onto the Army boats. Once the trucks drop off the aid on shore, they immediately turn around the return to the boats.
Yemen, Egypt presidents discuss Red Sea security
- Houthis claim they are attacking ships to stop Israel’s war on Gaza
RIYADH: The presidents of Egypt and Yemen held talks on Thursday about ways to secure shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council Chairman Rashad Al-Alimi and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met on the sidelines of the Arab League Summit in Bahrain, according to Yemen’s state news agency Saba.
Al-Alimi and El-Sisi emphasized the importance of security in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for the region’s stability.
Since November, the Houthis have launched hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at international commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden. They have reportedly been acting in solidarity with the Palestinian people and want Israel to stop its war on Gaza.
During the meeting, El-Sisi emphasized Egypt’s commitment to Yemen’s unity and stability, and added that Cairo would continue seeking a political solution to the crisis in that country.
Al-Alimi thanked Egypt for its efforts to alleviate suffering in Yemen and for seeking to ensure stability in the region.
