Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Thousands of Muslims packed Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque compound on the second Friday of Ramadan, for prayers that saw no clashes with the Israeli security forces, an AFP journalist reported.

The Jordanian body which administers the mosque compound in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem said that 250,000 people prayed at Islam's third holiest site.

In past years, the Old City was the setting for violence during Ramadan, but no major incidents were reported on Friday.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict had seen an upsurge of violence since the beginning of the year, raising fears of a flare-up during Ramadan. But the past 10 days since the start of the holy fasting month have seen a relative lull in violence.

Israel has been allowing Palestinians from the occupied West Bank to enter Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers, with COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, saying over 70,000 people crossed on Friday.

Posting images on Twitter of worshippers crowded at Israeli checkpoints en route to Jerusalem, Palestinian civil affairs minister, Hussein Al Sheikh, blasted the "strict and humiliating measures".

The Israeli forces meanwhile announced the crossings from Gaza and the West Bank would be closed from Wednesday evening to Saturday night due to the Jewish festival of Passover.

Palestinians from the West Bank will be able to cross on Friday for Ramadan prayers.

The crossings will be closed again on April 11 and 12, the end of Passover, the army said, adding that exceptions may be allowed on humanitarian or medical grounds.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli forces on Saturday shot dead an Arab man who they said grabbed a gun from an officer and fired it in a scuffle at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

The dead man was identified as 26-year-old medical student Mohammed Al Asibi, a resident of the Bedouin village of Hura, in southern Israel.

Asibi’s family has disputed the police account of his death and demanded to see CCTV footage, local media said, with police saying there was none.

The incident follows a relative lull in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the start of Ramadan, and comes amid fears of a flare-up during the holy Muslim month.

In a statement, police said Asibi was stopped near the Chain Gate, an access point to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

As he was being questioned, the statement said, Asibi “suddenly attacked one of the policemen”, grabbing his gun and firing it.

“In a swift response of the officers who were in danger and struggling with the terrorist, they shot him,” added the, saying medics later pronounced him dead.

Passers-by reported hearing gunfire, and an AFP photographer saw scores of Israeli police deployed in the Old City at around 1:00 am (22:00 GMT on Friday).

Raam, the Israeli parliament’s Islamist party, rejected the police’s account of events, noting in a Facebook post the claims from “witnesses” who said Asibi came to aid a woman who was in a scuffle with police.

Mansour Abbas, Raam’s head, questioned the authorities’ response that there was no footage of the alleged attack.

“This is a cover-up attempt to hide the truth,” he said on Twitter, demanding an immediate investigation.

‘Execution’ 

The umbrella organisation representing Israel’s Arab citizens announced a “general strike and day of mourning” on Sunday following the “execution” of Asibi.

Police, meanwhile, were standing by their original version of events and issued another statement Saturday afternoon claiming “the attack itself was not recorded on security cameras or on the body cameras of the police officers”.

They also rejected the notion a woman was involved, saying Asibi “arrived alone”, with officers suspicious of his presence at the compound after closing hours.

Refuting claims about the abundance of surveillance cameras in the area, police said the alleged “attack did not take place on the outside of the Chain Gate, which is indeed well documented, but rather on the inside”.

A video released by police showed what was described as Asibi milling around the compound alone. Another video showed people at the Chain Gate reacting in fright, presumably to the sound of gunshots.

The shooting occurred hours after tens of thousands of Palestinians had packed the Al Aqsa Mosque compound on the second Friday of Ramadan for peaceful prayers.

Israeli police said more than 100,000 faithful had gathered to pray at Islam’s third holiest site, built on what Jews call the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.

More than 2,000 police officers had been deployed throughout the city.

An upsurge in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the beginning of the year has raised concerns of further violence during the Ramadan fast.

CAIRO — Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad in Cairo on Saturday, a first since Syria’s civil war broke out over a decade ago, Shoukry’s office said.

The meeting comes amid amplified Arab engagement with the Damascus government which has been politically isolated in the region since the start of the Syria war and was expelled from the Cairo-based Arab League in 2011 over its bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations.

Mekdad’s visit to Cairo is the “first in more than 10 years” for a Syrian top diplomat and saw a closed door meeting between the two ministers followed by discussions between the two countries’ delegations, the Egyptian foreign ministry said.

Several Arab countries rushed to Syria’s aid after a February 6 earthquake killed tens of thousands in the war-torn country and neighbouring Turkey.

At the time, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi called his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad in an unprecedented show of support since Sisi took office in 2014.

The two country’s top diplomats also spoke over the phone in the aftermath of the quake.

Shoukry then visited Damascus and met Assad on February 27 in the first trip of its kind in more than a decade.

Discussions on Saturday focused on “supporting the Syrian people to restore [the country’s] unity and sovereignty over its whole territories”, the Egyptian ministry said in a statement.

Shoukry called for a “comprehensive political settlement to the Syrian crisis”, while reiterating Cairo’s backing for the United Nations special envoy’s efforts to resolve the conflict.

The two ministers also agreed “on intensifying channels of communication” between their countries, the statement said.

Unlike other Arab governments, Cairo never fully severed ties with Damascus after the war, but relations were downgraded.

But the aftermath of the quake saw heavyweights like Saudi Arabia send aid to Syria, followed by talks between Riyadh and Damascus to resume consular services.

The United Arab Emirates has led the charge to bring Syria back into the Arab fold, with President Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan saying last month that “the time has come” for Syria to be reintegrated into the wider region.

TUNIS — Tunisia announced tight restrictions on water usage, including rationing tap water, on Friday, as the drought-hit country braces for another baking summer.

The North African country’s dams are at critical lows following years of drought, exacerbated by pipeline leaks in a decrepit distribution network.

The agriculture ministry announced a ban on the use of potable water for irrigating farmland or green spaces, or for cleaning public areas or cars.

It said it would also implement quotas for mains supply to households until September.

The head of public water company Sonede, Mosbah Helali, said fines and even prison sentences were being considered for those breaking the rules, telling radio station Mosaique FM that mains supply would be cut between 9:00 pm and 3:00 am.

Residents of several areas of the capital have already complained of unannounced cuts to their mains supply at night since the start of the fasting month of Ramadan, when many stay up late.

“Years of drought and low water flow into reservoirs has impacted the country’s water stocks, which have reached an unprecedented situation,” the ministry said.

None of the country’s major reservoirs is more than a third full, while some are at at less than 15 per cent, threatening Tunisia’s agricultural sector, which usually accounts for 10 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

Farmers’ unions have voiced fears for the coming season, particularly as regards cereals. A poor domestic harvest would compound Tunisia’s problems procuring sufficient flour in the face of skyrocketing international wheat prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year.

The Tunisian Federation for Agriculture and Fisheries said thousands of hectares of farmland risked being left fallow due to the lack of rain.

“This year’s cereal season will be catastrophic — there won’t be a harvest,” spokesman Anis Kharbech told Tunisian media. He said projected yields would not even be enough to provide seeds for next year’s crop.

Scientists say that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of human-caused global warming, and that droughts worldwide are set to become more frequent, longer and more intense.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli court on Thursday charged two Jewish settlers with "committing an act of terror" for attacking Palestinians in a village of the occupied West Bank this month, officials said.

The rare indictment, normally reserved for Palestinians, came after a group of settlers attacked a Palestinian family in their car in Huwara, where eight days earlier two Israeli settlers had been shot dead amid a surge in violence in the Palestinian territory.

The fatal February 26 shootings sparked a rampage by dozens of Israeli settlers who set homes and cars ablaze in Huwara, with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying he thought the village should be "wiped out" in remarks he later retracted.

According to the indictment filed at Israel's central district court, the two young men were among a group of eight to 10 settlers who on March 6, during the Jewish holiday Purim, drove to the parking lot of a supermarket in Huwara.

Upon seeing the settlers emerge from two vehicles armed with an axe, hammer, stones and pepper spray, shoppers rushed into the supermarket and closed its metal shutters to defend themselves. 

A Palestinian couple and their toddler daughter remained in their car as one of settlers who was charged threw stones at the vehicle and the other used the axe to break its windows and attack the father.

The father suffered wounds to his shoulder and arm while the attackers doused the car with pepper spray and the other accused vandalised two other cars parked nearby.

The family eventually managed to drive away as the settlers hurled rocks at them, wounding the father in the head.

The pair were charged with “a severe act of terror” and “racially motivated” damage, which prosecutors alleged had “an ideological or nationalistic motive”.

According to Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, the accused, arrested on March 13, belong to “a violent group acting to harm Palestinians and undermine the actions of security forces in dealing with Palestinian terror”.

Such nationalistic crimes are “a danger” to Israel’s security, cause unrest and harm “the routine of West Bank residents”, Shin Bet said in a statement.

DUBAI — The United Arab Emirates' president named his eldest son as crown prince of Abu Dhabi late on Wednesday, making him the oil-rich Gulf monarchy's likely next leader.

President Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan tapped Sheikh Khaled, 41, his jiu jitsu-loving son, as crown prince of the UAE's richest emirate, a position traditionally held by the leader-in-waiting.

It was part of the biggest political shake-up since Sheikh Mohamed, 62, became president last May following the death of his half-brother Sheikh Khalifa.

Sheikh Mohammad’s brother Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, the owner of Manchester City football club, became vice-president, joining Dubai’s ruler and UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in the role.

Two other brothers of the president, Tahnoun bin Zayed, the UAE’s national security adviser and chairman of the ADQ sovereign wealth fund, and Hazza bin Zayed, became deputy rulers of Abu Dhabi, which controls the bulk of the country’s oil reserves.

Sheikh Khaled’s appointment was welcomed by other Gulf rulers including fellow energy giants Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as leaders of the UAE’s six other emirates.