Clashes this Friday, April 15 in the morning between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police on the Esplanade of the Mosques in Jerusalem left around twenty injured. This violence occurs, like last year, in the middle of Ramadan, and especially after a series of attacks in Israel, carried out in particular by Israeli Arabs linked to the Islamic State organization but also to Palestinians from Jenin in the West Bank. .
Good Friday, the start of Passover and Ramadan: the mix is explosive in Jerusalem, reports our correspondent in Jerusalem, Michael Paul.
Violent clashes took place on the Esplanade of the Mosques and caused numerous injuries on the Palestinian side and also among the Israeli police.
In a first assessment, the Palestinian Red Crescent had reported seven wounded in these morning clashes in the Old City of East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector occupied since 1967 by Israel, before quickly revising this assessment upwards.
“ Twenty wounded have been transferred so far to hospitals in Jerusalem in connection with the ongoing clashes (at the Esplanade of the Mosques). And there are still injured on the site “, said the Palestinian Red Crescent.
For its part, the Israeli police said that three policemen were injured.
It began with the first prayer of the day, Fajr, shortly after 4:30 a.m., with rocks thrown from the Esplanade at Jewish worshipers praying below facing the Western Wall.
The police responded with rubber bullets before entering the mosque of Al Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam, where Palestinian demonstrators who displayed the Hamas flag had taken refuge. Tear gas and stun grenades were fired into the mosque itself. According to an AFP photographer on the spot, the clashes were fed and more than a hundred Palestinians threw projectiles in the direction of the Israeli security forces.
Hamas and the Muslim authorities reacted very strongly.
Since March 22, Israel has been hit by four attacks, the first two carried out by Israeli Arabs linked to the jihadist organization Islamic State (IS), in which the three perpetrators were killed by Israeli forces. Two other attacks were carried out in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area by Palestinians from the area of Jenin, West Bank.
These attacks killed fourteen people in Israel. In addition, 22 Palestinians, including assailants, have been killed since that date in violence, linked in particular to ” counterterrorism operations in the West Bank.
On Thursday, three Palestinians were killed in Israeli operations in the West Bank having also injured many people, one of whom finally succumbed to his injuries on Friday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
►Also read: A raid by the Israeli army in the Palestinian camp of Jenin leaves one dead and injured
(and with AFP)