AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- Thousands of Palestinian worshippers attended the first Friday prayer of Ramadan in Al-Aqsa Mosque as Israeli forces were put on high alert in Al-Quds.
The Islamic trust, or Waqf, which administers the affairs of the mosque, said 80,000 people attended the prayer service, with visitors coming from the occupied West Bank and the Palestinian community within Occupied Palestine.
Hundreds of thousands of worshippers often attend Friday prayers in Al-Aqsa during Ramadan. The low turnout this week comes after restrictions placed by Israeli authorities on worshippers travelling to Al-Quds.
Earlier this week, the Zionist army said only men over the age of 50 and women of all ages can visit Al-Quds from the West Bank. Additionally, troops have blocked off informal entry points across the fences separating the West Bank and Al-Quds.
Ahead of the Friday prayer, hundreds of Israeli security forces were deployed in the Old City, erecting roadblocks and checking residents’ IDs.
The increased presence of officers in the city comes a day after a Palestinian killed two Zionists in a shooting in Tel Aviv. The latest attack brought the Israeli death toll from recent retaliatory attacks to 13 people, who have been killed in four separate incidents since 22 March. All five Palestinian assailants were subsequently martyred.
In the same period, Israeli fire martyred six Palestinians in the West Bank, including one who was shot by a settler.
The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a coalition of a number of armed Palestinian groups, hailed the news “heroic operation”, saying it “confused the Zionist enemy and proved its fragility and weakness”.
The operation “showed the ability of our Palestinian people and their resistant youth to take the battle to the depths of the enemy’s entity,” the PRC said in a statement.
“It proved that the spirit of challenge and resistance in our people exceeds the power of the Zionist enemy.”
Abdul-Latif al-Qanou, a spokesman for Hamas, also said the operation struck the Zionist security system and showed the ability of “our people to hurt the Zionist regime,” the Palestinian Shehab news agency reported.
Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-headquartered resistance group, also reacted to the operation, calling it a “natural response” to the Zionist regime’s aggression.
Such operations, it added, was making the regime “pay part of the price of its own crimes and its settlers’ terrorist acts against our people” in the occupied territories.
Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah said the Palestinians once again demonstrated their ability to confront the occupying regime and respond to its crimes.
The spike in killings coincides with warnings that tensions may escalate next week as Israeli settlers and far-right activists announced plans to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Jewish Passover holidays, to perform religious rituals inside the site.
In Damascus Gate, a popular spot for Al-Quds residents to socialize during Ramadan, Zionist forces have assaulted Palestinians on a nightly basis since the start of the Muslim holy month last week. More than 30 people have been arrested in the crackdown, including minors.
Last Ramadan, the occupying regime of Israel temporarily erected barricades in Damascus Gate that restricted Palestinians from gathering in the area, which sparked widespread protests and subsequent Israeli crackdowns. Clashes spiked later in the month when the Zionist regime tried to expel Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and attacked worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque. This prompted widespread demonstrations across the occupied West Bank and the Palestinian community inside Occupied Palestine, and led to an 11-day war between the Zionist regime and Palestinians in Gaza.
The occupying regime’s large-scale military operation on the besieged Strip martyred 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, according to the UN. In Occupied Palestine, 13 people were killed by rockets launched from Gaza.