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JERUSALEM, July 26, 2012 (WAFA) – Israeli police raided al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City late Wednesday and forced around 20 Muslim worshipers performing night prayer to leave the premise, witnesses said on Thursday.

They said that the police detained an imam, who was leading the prayer, and transferred him to an unknown location before closing the gates to the compound until dawn prayer.

Police restricted entry of young men into Al-Aqsa who were headed to perform dawn prayer, while keeping identity papers of other until they leave the Mosque.

Muslim leaders have warned that fanatic Jews will try to enter al-Haram al-Sharif compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites which houses al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, to hold ceremonies marking the destruction of the Jewish temple more than 3000 years ago, which coincides on Sunday.

The leaders called on Muslims to keep a constant vigil at the compound to defend it against the intruders.

M.H./M.S.

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OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Dozens of Jerusalemite youths engaged in violent confrontations with Israeli occupation forces in a number of suburbs in occupied Jerusalem at dawn Thursday.

Eyewitnesses said that the confrontations flared after Jewish settlers and policemen stormed the holy Aqsa mosque, forced out worshippers, and arrested a religious scholar for refusing to get out of the mosque.

The Israeli occupation authority has allowed Jewish settlers to intensify their desecration of the Aqsa mosque during the holy fasting month of Ramadan under heavy security protection.