JERUSALEM: Israeli police on Friday arrested 10 Palestinians during clashes at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, with nine people injured as protesters hurled rocks and officers fired rubber bullets, police and medics said.
About 1,000 people gathered in the compound after weekly prayers chanting “God is great” and some hoisting Palestinian flags. Some demonstrators threw stones at police, who raided the site, a reporter said.
The confrontation came after Palestinians protested against Jewish nationalists who had marched through Israel-annexed East Jerusalem on Tuesday, chanting insults to Islam.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said nine people were hurt, including three hospitalized in the confrontation, with injuries due to “beatings, rubber bullets and sound bombs.”
“Several dozen youths began disturbing the order and throwing stones toward security men,” police said in a statement, adding that “Ten suspects were arrested.”
A day earlier, police said they arrested eight people who demonstrated at the Damascus Gate, an entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, where the nationalist Jewish march had congregated.
Also on Friday, Palestinians protested near Nablus in the occupied West Bank against the expansion of a Jewish settlement on the lands of Beita village. The Red Crescent said 47 people were injured when security forces fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.
The Al-Aqsa compound lies in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967, in a move most of the international community does not recognize.
