JERUSALEM: Violence resumed for a second straight night in Jerusalem on Wednesday when Palestinian worshippers barricaded themselves inside Al-Aqsa Mosque at the Old City's sensitive compound and Israeli police used force to remove dozens of worshippers.
The unrest was less intense than the previous night. But the situation remained combustible as Muslims marked the Ramadan holy month and Jews began the weeklong Passover holiday. Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip renewed their rocket fire at Israel, raising fears of a wider conflagration.
Several rockets were fired from the northern Gaza Strip towards Israel in the early hours of April 5 after clashes erupted inside the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem when Israeli police entered the holy site. The Israeli forces said they entered the mosque compound to dislodge agitators, in a move denounced as a crime by the Palestinian Hamas movement, which had called on Palestinians in the West Bank to go en masse to the Al-Aqsa mosque to defend it. Photo by MAHMUD HAMS /AFP
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