JERUSALEM — Tens of 1000’s of Muslims demonstrated Friday throughout the Center East in assist of the Palestinians and to protest in opposition to the Israeli airstrikes pounding the Gaza Strip, underscoring the danger of a wider regional battle erupting as Israel prepares for a attainable floor invasion there.
From Amman, Jordan, to Yemen’s capital, Muslims poured out onto the streets after weekly Friday prayers. At Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israeli police had been allowing solely older males, girls and kids to the sprawling hilltop compound for prayers, making an attempt to forestall the potential for demonstration as tens of 1000’s attend on a typical Friday.
An Related Press reporter watched police enable only a Palestinian teenage lady and her mom into the compound out of 20 worshippers who tried, a few of them even over the age of fifty. Younger Palestinian males who have been refused entry gathered on the steps close to Lion’s Gate, their eyes downcast, till police shouted at them and shepherded them out of the {Old} Metropolis altogether.
“We are able to’t dwell, we will’t breathe, they’re killing the whole lot that good is nice inside us,” Ahmad Barbour, a 57-year-old cleaner in a clear white thobe, mentioned, seething, after police blocked him from coming into for prayers. “The whole lot that’s forbidden to us is allowed to them.”
The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to each Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence earlier than. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest web site in Islam and stands in a spot recognized to Jews because the Temple Mount, which is the holiest web site in Judaism.
In Baghdad alone, tens of 1000’s gathered in Tahrir Sq. within the middle of Baghdad for protests known as by the influential Shiite cleric and political chief Muqtada al-Sadr.
“Might this demonstration … terrify the nice evil, America, which helps Zionist terrorism in opposition to our family members in Palestine,” Sadr mentioned in an internet assertion.
Throughout Iran, a supporter of Hamas and Israel’s regional archenemy, demonstrators protested. In Tehran, the capital, protesters burned Israeli and Ameircan flags, chanting: “Demise to Israel,” “Demise to America,” “Israel might be doomed,” and “Palestine would be the conqueror.”
In Yemen’s capital of Sanaa, held by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels nonetheless at conflict with a Saudi-led coalition, dwell tv footage confirmed demonstrators crowding streets and waving Yemeni and Palestinian flags. The rebels’ slogan lengthy has been: “God is the best; demise to America; demise to Israel; curse of the Jews; victory to Islam.”
After prayers in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, some worshippers stepped on American and Israeli flags, in an indication of disrespect.
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Related Press writers Abdulrahman Zeyad in Baghdad, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.