RNA – Egypt’s al-Azhar Univerity’s Islamic Research Council has issued a statement condemning the recent attack and desecration by Israeli security forces and settlers on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque in an attempt to prevent Palestinians from praying in the mosque, which is Islam’s third-holiest site and first qiblah, while expanding their military deployment in the mosque’s courtyard of the holy site for the Jewish Rosh Hashanah New Year holiday.
Since Sunday, more than 200 Israeli soldiers have stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque firing rubber bullets and tear gas at Palestinian worshippers.
The Islamic Research Council’s statement said firing on worshipers in a mosque is contrary to the teachings set forth in the divine laws of peaceful coexistence and cooperation with other faiths and added that attacking holy sites is the violation of their sanctity.
They warned that the ongoing aggression by Zionist terrorists is a dangerous and unreasonable escalation which will further inflame the feelings of Muslims throughout the world and stressed that the Zionists' recent actions are a form of radicalism and extremism that will lead to a new wave of anger and violence.
At the end of the statement, the Islamic Research Council demanded the end of the “false” Zionist regime’s attacks on the al-Aqsa Mosque and called on the international community to stop the regime’s continuous violations of holy sites in occupied Palestine.
The director of the al-Aqsa Mosque, Shaykh Omar al-Kiswani, has said that at least nine Palestinians, including an elderly man, have been wounded in the clashes at the mosque. Dozens of worshippers also sustained suffocation injuries from tear gas as well as injuries from rubber bullets fired by Israeli forces.
The recent clashes erupted after group of 120 illegal Israeli settlers and the regime’s minister of agriculture stormed the mosque, prompting Israeli forces to close off the site’s entrances.
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