Israeli police closed and cancelled Friday noon prayers in Al Aqsa mosque and briefly detained Jerusalem’s top Muslim cleric after three Palestinians and two Israeli police officers were killed in a shootout in Al Aqsa compound.<\/p>\n
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Sheikh Mohammad Ahmed Hussein, who decried the mosque closure, was taken into custody from the Bab Al-Asbat area (Lion’s Gate) after leading an open-air prayer nearby.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Israeli police detained my father in a violent manner and took him to unknown destination,” said Omar, the grand mufti’s son.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hussein was later released on $2,800 bail.<\/p>\n
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Sheikh Omar Keswani, a religious official at Al Aqsa, decried the closure and cancellation of Friday prayers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Forbidding the Friday prayer is an unfair procedure,” Keswani said. “What happened earlier is now being taken advantage of by the Israeli right to impose a new reality in Al Aqsa mosque.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Haj Khalil Abu Elsheikh, 77, travelled 100km from Beer-sheva to attend Friday prayers at Al Aqsa mosque.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“No religion allows this,” he said, referring to praying on the side of the road. “No belief accepts this.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The rare attack from within the contested Al Aqsa compound, revered by both Muslims and Jews, raised new concerns about an escalation of violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli police closed and cancelled Friday noon prayers in Al Aqsa mosque and briefly detained Jerusalem’s top Muslim cleric after three Palestinians and two Israeli police officers were killed in a shootout in Al Aqsa compound. Sheikh Mohammad Ahmed Hussein, who decried the mosque closure, was taken into custody from the Bab Al-Asbat area (Lion’s Gate) after leading an open-air prayer nearby. “Israeli police detained my father in a violent manner and took him to unknown destination,” said Omar, the grand mufti’s son. Hussein was later released<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8422,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8423,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421\/revisions\/8423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}