A rise in street violence has prompted the Prime Minister to cancel his visit to Germany planned for Thursday.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders have been attempting to calm the fueled confrontations that have been surrounding Jerusalem’s al Aqsa mosque complex, Islam’s third holiest site which is considered as a holy place called the Temple Mount by Jews and the site of their two ancient temples.
The prospect that Israel is trying to expand the Jewish presence at the hilltop compound has led to ongoing clashes, including Palestinians barricading themselves inside the mosque and throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli forces.
Several incidents throughout Israel including a Palestinian man was shot dead in southern Israel on Wednesday after he stabbed an Israeli soldier and attempted to grab his weapon.
Earlier Wednesday, a Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli man who then shot and wounded her in Jerusalem’s Old City and a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man outside a mall in central Israel, police said. The attacker was arrested.
Four Israelis have been killed in stabbings in Jerusalem and a drive-by shooting in the occupied West Bank since Thursday, and two Palestinians have been shot dead and scores injured in clashes with security services, triggering fears of an escalation.
Palestinians fear increasing visits by Jewish groups to al-Aqsa are eroding longtime Muslim religious control there. Netanyahu has said he is committed to maintaining the status quo.
Clashes between Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank resulted in hundreds of injuries and the death of a Palestinian teenager on Sunday. The recent escalation in violence is a reaction to Israel’s decision of restricting Palestinians from entering Jerusalem’s Old City with the exception of residents.
The clashes intensified on Monday after Israeli forces shot and killed Huthayfa Soliman, 18. According to the Israeli military, he and others were throwing firecrackers, rocks, and firebombs at the soldiers at a checkpoint near Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society told Al Jazeera that nearly 400 people have been injured in the recent clashes. The humanitarian organization reported that in two incidents, Jewish settlers have smashed ambulances and physically attacked their staff members.
The escalation in violence began Thursday when Palestinian gunmen killed a Jewish couple near a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Two days later, two ultra-Orthodox Jewish men were fatally stabbed by a Palestinian teenager in the Old City of Jerusalem. Hours later, a Palestinian man stabbed and wounded a 15-year-old Jewish boy in a Jerusalem neighborhood. Palestinians have also shut themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque, blocking all entrances and throwing firebombs at police.
The Guardian reported that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a harsh offensive against “Palestinian Islamic terror” on Sunday. In a televised announcement, he said there would be a series of measures, including the “speeding up of the process for the demolition of the homes of terrorists.”
The Palestinian state news agency reported that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appealed the United nations for an international force to be deployed in the West Bank. Abbas has increasingly asked for outside forces.
Nepal is low on gasoline and medical supplies due to an unofficial economic blockade imposed by the neighboring country where they get most of their supplies, India.
Many Nepalese believe that the blockade is a way of retaliating against the Nepalese government after they approved a new constitution that New Delhi believed to be discriminatory to an Indian community living in Nepal’s border districts., the Madhesi.
Violent protests by the Mahesis that killed at least 45 people have taken place for months while Nepalese lawmakers debated the constitution. The violence escalated after the constitution was made official.
Shortly after, Indian trucks stopped crossing the border. Only about 100 or so have crossed the border since Wednesday, but more than 1,000 are sitting at the border with medicine, gasoline, produce, and cooking fuel. Currently, fuel is being rationed in Nepal, and is no longer being sold for the use of private vehicles for the next three days.
“Why is India imposing a blockade against us? Don’t we have the right to draft our constitution?” asked Nirmala Rai, a school teacher who participated in a demonstration near the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu on Monday.
India has stated that there is no blockade against Nepal. They blame protesters for blocking the roads and scaring their truck drivers.
Officials on both sides announced that they are working on the situation and that supplies will resume soon, but neither side had a time estimate for when the trucks will cross the border again.
The United Nations reported that teens in the Central African Republic have become targets in a new surge of violence that has left many of the teens beheaded, shot, and burned.
Inter-religious clashes began again in Africa’s capital after a Muslim man’s dead body was found. Three dozen people have died in the violence.
UNICEF stated that children were being targeted and initial reports showed that several children between the ages of 7 and 17 had been decapitated, shot, and/or burned.
“Nothing can justify the deliberate targeting of children,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s West and Central Africa Regional Director. “These appalling crimes against boys and girls who are caught between warring factions must stop, and those carrying them must be held responsible.”
Children have also been forced to fight for armed groups in the Central African Republic. The U.N. estimates that up to 10,000 children have been forced to join militia groups in Central African Republic since the conflicts began.
Hundreds of thousands have been displaced and thousands have died because of the violence in Central African Republic. The violence began in 2013 after mainly-Muslim Seleka rebels took over the country which had been primarily Christian.
Violence once again erupted between Palestinians and Israeli riot police after young protesters barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, despite an order permitting only men over the age of 50 to enter the compound for prayers. Women of any age are also allowed entry. Israel has imposed the ban during times of unrest because it is for the most part, young palestinian men who throw rocks at the holy site. This comes as Jerusalem is filled with those who have come to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City has been a sore point for both Palestinians and Jews. This ground is very much a center point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Muslims revere it as the place they believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, while the Jews call it the Temple Mount, the site of the two biblical Jewish temples.
Palestinians stockpiled rocks and other projectiles at the Al-Aqsa mosque overnight, according to police spokeswoman Luba Samri.
Palestinians threw rocks, firebombs and firecrackers from within the mosque at the police, Samri also added that the fire bombs sparked a fire at the entrance to the mosque. Waqf guards did not prevent the “desecration of the sanctity of the place,” she said .
Police had tried to negotiate with the Waqf – the Islamic religious authority that oversees the compound – to call for calm, but talks failed and police entered the compound to seize the “dangerous devices intended to harm visitors to the site and police and endanger their lives,” Samri added.
Israeli Police were able to restore calm but occasional stone throwing continued throughout the morning. They reported that by noon the site was quiet.
On Monday at least three protesters were shot and injured, a day after the Himalayan nation adopted its first democratic constitution, the violence diminished hopes that the historic event would put a stop to weeks of clashes.
The demonstrators are in critical condition after police opened fire at an anti-constitution protest in the city of Biratnagar, said Pramod Kharel, a deputy police superintendent in the Morang district of southern Nepal.
The three biggest forces in parliament — the Nepali Congress, UML and Maoist parties — finally reached agreement in June, spurred by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake two months earlier that killed nearly 8,900 people and destroyed around half a million homes. The new constitution is the final stage in a peace process that began when Maoist fighters laid down their arms in 2006 after a decade-long insurgency aimed at abolishing an autocratic monarchy and creating a more equal society.
President Ram Baran Yadav on Sunday promulgated Nepal’s new constitution, despite fierce opposition by minority groups in the southern plains whose homeland will be split up under the charter. It creates seven states in a secular, federal system, but is opposed by some groups who wanted to re-establish Nepal as a Hindu nation and others who feel it is unfavourable to people in the plains, near India.
More than 40 people, mostly protesters, have been killed in recent weeks in clashes over the plan.
Palestinians attacked Israelis with Molotov cocktails, rocks and other projectiles after Islamic terrorist group Hamas called for a “day of rage.”
The terrorist group was capitalizing on days of tension around the Al-Aqsa mosque during the Jewish new year.
Israeli officials had prepared in advance for the terrorist-initiated violence by adding 800 extra police to patrols in the middle of Jerusalem and surrounding Arab areas.
“The Israeli police have heightened security in and around Jerusalem and the Old City in order to prevent and respond to any incidents that could take place,” said spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, adding that undercover units had been deployed.
Three people were wounded by a firebomb according to police officials. Five Palestinians have been arrested for the attack.
Palestinian leaders had been claiming that Israel was attemping to change the status quo at the site, where Jews can visit under police guard but are not allowed to stop and pray.
Hungarian police have used tear gas and water cannons to drive Syrian migrants away from the now closed Hungarian-Serbian border.
The migrants responded by throwing rocks, bottles and other projectiles at the police.
The Hungarian government closed the border on Tuesday and made it illegal to either enter the country or to damage the new razor-wire fencing at the border. Serbia’s foreign ministry said that Hungary has actually closed the main border crossing between the two nations for 30 days.
Hungary also announced the fact-tracking of trials for migrants who have been arrested for illegally entering the nation.
Serbia has protested the firing of tear gas into their territory.
The same time that Hungary has shut down the borders of their nation, Croatia has said they will allow migrants to cross through their land to make their way to other EU nations.
“We heard that Hungary was closed so the police told us we should come this way,” Amadou, 35, from Mauritania told AFP news agency. “We don’t know what we should do now. Do we have to catch a boat?”
The EU’s border agency says the total number of migrants entering their borders has passed 500,000. Only 280,000 entered the EU throughout all of 2014.
A plan championed by Germany to force all members of the EU to take a certain amount of migrants or pay financial penalties collapsed after arguments within the EU leadership.
Muslim youths attacked Israeli police for a second day at the al-Aqsa mosque complex in East Jerusalem.
The site, considered holy by both Jews and Muslims, was raided by Israeli police after Palestinian youths attempted to attack far-right Jews who visited the complex for the Jewish New Year.
“As the police entered the compound, masked youths fled inside the mosque and threw stones at the force,” a police spokesperson said in a statement.
Nine Palestinian youths were arrested.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would be holding emergency talks on the clashes between police and Palestinians that began Sunday.
Netanyahu said in a statement he would “use any means to maintain the status quo and the rule of law on the Temple Mount”.
Police also discovered that the Palestinians were stocking up on pipe bombs and other weapons. A cache of bombs and weapons was found near to the mosque site and is currently being forensically examined by Israeli authorities.
United Nations officials in the area called for calm saying they wanted everyone to do their share in “ensuring that visitors and worshippers demonstrate restraint and respect for the sanctity of the area”.
Drivers on Interstate 10 in the Phoenix area are in a heightened state of fear because of a serial shooter that has struck at least 11 times.
Local authorities confirmed that 11 vehicles have been hit with everything from BBs to bullets.
A 13-year-old girl was injured by flying glass after the windshield of the car she was riding was struck by a bullet.
The latest incident has the passenger side window of a truck shattered by a bullet.
One Arizona official says the incidents are domestic terrorism.
“Anytime that you have multiple shootings against American citizens on a highway, that’s terrorism,” Department of Public Safety Director Frank Milstead said. “They’re trying to frighten or kill somebody.”
A spokesman for Arizona’s state troopers says that someone needs to come forward to authorities with information on the shooter.
“What we have is a very dangerous situation and somebody knows something,” Raul Garcia said. “You need to let law enforcement know.”
Authorities told the public they have increased amounts of officers on the streets looking for the shooter or shooters.
“We have a number of officers … both uniformed, non-uniformed, plainclothes, undercover vehicles, marked vehicles on the road patrolling, looking for the suspect, looking for leads,” said Bart Graves, another Department of Public Safety spokesman.
