Israeli police announced Wednesday night that they had intervened inside the al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem to dislodge “agitators” who had introduced “fireworks, sticks and stones”.
Denouncing “an unprecedented crime”, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, called on Palestinians in the West Bank “to go en masse to the al-Aqsa mosque to defend it”.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque is located on the Esplanade of the Mosques, the third holiest site of Islam in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel. The Esplanade is built on what the Jews call the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism.
This violence comes a little before the middle of Ramadan and as the Jews prepare to celebrate Easter from Wednesday evening, while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has experienced a sharp upsurge in violence since the beginning of the year.
Israeli police have released video footage of more than 50 seconds showing explosions of what appear to be fireworks inside the place of worship, including figures throwing rocks.
Another police video footage shows riot police advancing through the mosque shielding themselves from rocket fire with shields
Footage then shows a barricaded door of fireworks batteries on a carpet on the floor and police evacuating at least five people with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
After the announcement of the clashes at the Al-Aqsa mosque, several rockets were fired from the northern Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory, according to AFP journalists and witnesses.
AFP journalists saw three rockets fired from afar, and witnesses said they saw others, while the Israeli army reported the triggering of warning sirens in several Israeli urban areas around the Gaza Strip.