Sources told Wafa that one of the groups that entered the compound was accompanied by former lawmaker Moshe Feiglin.Israel’s military has pounded central Gaza with heavy air strikes as US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators planned to resume talks on a truce and hostage release deal, AFP reports.
Israeli police deployed in strength in annexed east Jerusalem ahead of an annual march by Jewish nationalists that comes with tensions sky-high nearly eight months into the Gaza offensive, AFP reports.
The so-called Jerusalem Day flag march commemorates the Israeli army’s capture of the city’s eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Police set up barriers near the Damascus Gate entrance after announcing plans to deploy more than 3,000 officers during the day, an AFP correspondent reported.
Police typically force the closure of Palestinian businesses near the march route and keep Palestinian residents away.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said on Tuesday that he and fellow marchers intended to march to the super-sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, where they are allowed to visit at certain times but not to pray.
“We will march tomorrow through the Damascus Gate and Jews will go onto the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the most important place for the state of Israel,” Ben Gvir told army radio.
However police said they expected the march to end at its normal terminus, the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray.
“The march is not expected to pass through the Temple Mount or the Temple Mount gates,” a police statement said.
Police said they were deploying officers throughout the city to “maintain public order, safety and secure property, as well as direct traffic” during the march.
Tensions were high in annexed east Jerusalem where thousands of police were deployed to guard Israel’s annual “flag March” that has sparked clashes between Jews and Arabs in previous years.
But fighting has also flared again in central areas, where the army said “troops have started targeted operational activity in the areas of Bureij and eastern Deir al-Balah, both above and below ground”.
“The activity started with a series of air strikes on terror targets, including military compounds, weapons storage facilities and underground infrastructure,” it said.
“During the strikes, several Hamas terrorists were eliminated.” Bombardment of central Gaza killed 11 people near the Al-Maghazi camp and two near Deir al-Balah, said witnesses and Palestinian civil defence and hospital officials.
Families have rushed the dead and wounded to hospitals in the area, where AFP reporters said civilians were once more packing their belongings on pickup trucks and wheelchairs to flee.
More than 36,586 Palestinians have been killed and 83,074 have been injured in Israeli military offensive on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.
The toll includes at least 36 deaths over the past 24 hours, the statement added.Gaza Health Ministry’s Munir al-Bursh has called for more fuel to be delivered into northern Gaza as medical teams return to work at the Indonesian Field Hospital, Al Jazeera reports.
“The [Israeli forces] destroyed the health sector in northern Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We are calling on the world to bring diesel fuel into northern Gaza … we are working at the minimum.”
