OCCUPIED AL-QUDS: Israeli police rounded up 60 "suspects" in Occupied al-Quds overnight and promised more arrests on Friday, after what a spokesman said were calls for unrest at the city’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP the detainees were "Arabs", a term that could refer to Palestinians or to Arab citizens of Israel.
Israeli public radio said that all were residents of Israeli-annexed east Occupied al-Quds, occupied by the Jewish state in the 1967 Six Day war. Rosenfeld said the crackdown followed "calls for public disturbances" at Muslim on Friday prayers.
"As part of the police preparations based on intelligence, police arrested 60 suspects involved in incitement to violence," he said. "Police will continue to make arrests." An official statement said police numbers in and around the Al Aqsa compound -- in east Occupied al-Qud’s walled Old City -- had been beefed up.
The site is the third-holiest in Islam and a focus of Palestinian aspirations for statehood. It is also the location of Judaism’s most holy spot and a frequent scene of conflict between the two sides. Muslim worshippers’ access to Al Aqsa and the adjoining Dome of the Rock is controlled by Israeli security forces.