JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Dawn Ramadan prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound ended peacefully on Sunday after days of heightened tension at the flashpoint Jerusalem site, as a mass Passover benediction at the adjacent Western Wall began.
Small groups of Jewish visitors under heavy police guard walked through the mosque compound, known in Judaism as Temple Mount, as thousands of worshippers gathered for the Passover’s special “Priestly Blessing” at the Western Wall below.
The Al-Aqsa compound – sacred to Muslims and Jews – has been at the centre of a security crisis set off last week when Israeli police raided the mosque to dislodge what they said were youths barricaded inside armed with rocks and fireworks.
Footage of the raid, showing police beating worshippers, triggered a furious reaction across the Arab world, sparking rocket attacks on Israel by Palestinian factions that were met with Israeli strikes on sites in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
Overnight into Sunday, at least six rockets were launched towards the Israeli-held Golan Heights from Syria, while Israeli jets struck Syrian military targets in response. There were no reports of casualties on either side.
At Al-Aqsa, the special Tarawih Ramadan prayer on Saturday night ended peacefully despite fears violence would erupt there once more.
On Friday, two Israeli sisters from a settlement in the occupied West Bank were killed when their car came under fire by suspected Palestinian gunmen, Hours later, an Italian tourist was killed when a car driven by a man from an Arab city in Israel ploughed into a group in a shoreline park in Tel Aviv.
The funeral of the two sisters, who had dual Israeli and British nationality, is due to be held later on Sunday.
After a year of escalated Israeli-Palestinian violence, tensions are running especially high as Ramadan and Passover coincide, with a focus on the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem’s walled Old City. Clashes there between police and worshippers helped spark a 10-day war Israel-Gaza war in 2021.
As in previous years, the government is expected to ban entry to the compound to non-Muslims for the last 10 days of Ramadan, which is expected to end on April 20 or 21.
Far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the ban not to be imposed this year.
(Reporting by Ammar Awad, Sinan Abu Mayzer and Ilan Rozenberg; Writing by James Mackenzie and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
