RAMALLAH: About 50,000 Palestinians peacefully performed the first Friday prayer of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque amid tightened Israeli security procedures in the wake of Thursday’s Tel Aviv violence that left two Israelis killed.

Four of the 15 people injured in the attack are in a serious condition, according to Israeli medical sources.

Thousands of Israeli citizens and Palestinians from the West Bank flocked to the mosque early in the morning after passing through Israeli military checkpoints at the entrances to Jerusalem.

About 3,000 Israeli policemen were deployed throughout East Jerusalem, the Old City and at the gates leading to the mosque. There was no untoward incident.

Ikrima Sabri, the imam at Al-Aqsa, praised the worshipers who came to the mosque from far away places facing Israeli checkpoints and urged Muslims to pray at Al-Aqsa regularly, with special emphasis on the nightly taraweeh prayer.

Ibrahim Al-Anbawi, 53, from the Anata refugee camp near Jerusalem, told Arab News that the prayer took place “quietly and without tension.” There were fewer worshippers because of Thursday’s Tel Aviv attack and fears of consequences, he added.

Al-Anbawi, who offers Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa every week, said the sermon was confined to religiosity, without any reference to the current political situation to avoid stirring up feelings.

Meanwhile, the Tel Aviv shooting attack in which a Palestinian gunman shot dead two people at a bar continues to cast a shadow over life in both the West Bank and Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack and stressed the dangers of “continuing the repeated incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque and the provocative actions of extremist settler groups.”

However, the attack was praised by several Palestinian factions and much of the public.

The officers found the shooter hiding near a mosque in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said. During an exchange of fire, the attacker was killed, the agency added.

A son of a retired Palestinian security officer, attacker Ra’ad Hazem, 29, was from the Jenin refugee camp in the north of the West Bank.

A high-ranking Palestinian security officer, who preferred anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media, told Arab News that the recent attacks in Israel constituted a “pivotal shift,” with attackers switching from knives to guns, “which causes more victims and spreads a state of terror in the Israeli street.”

He said these attacks “reflect the state of anger in the hearts of the Palestinians against the continued Israeli oppression and the absence of any political or economic horizon.”

Palestinian factions said the Tel Aviv attack represented a natural response to the “crimes of the Israeli occupation and the continuation of its violations in occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Thirteen Israelis have been killed, and more than 20 others wounded in four attacks carried out by Palestinians in less than a month.

The Israeli Channel 12 said the demand for psychological help in the country has increased tenfold over the past two weeks after the Beersheba and Tel Aviv strikes.

Condemning the attack, Israeli Premier Naftali Bennett said: “Our war on deadly terrorism is long and difficult, but we will win it.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said: “We will fight terrorism together, strike the resistance fighters wherever they hide, find their senders and collaborators anywhere, and not rest until calm returns to the streets.”

In contrast, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said: “We will expand our operations against the wave of attacks. The price we will exact from the perpetrators of the attacks and their senders will be heavy.”

Gantz said that Israel arrested 200 Palestinians, and “if necessary, we will arrest thousands more.”

Abbas said the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians “only leads to a further deterioration of the situation, as we all strive to achieve stability, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, and the upcoming Christian and Jewish holidays.”

Abbas warned against “exploiting this condemned incident to carry out attacks against our Palestinian people.”

He stressed “the danger of the continued and repeated incursions into Al-Aqsa and the provocative actions of extremist settler groups everywhere.”

He said the cycle of violence confirms that “permanent, comprehensive and just peace is the shortest and correct way to provide security and stability for the Palestinians, Israelis and people of the region.”

Gantz praised Abbas’s condemnation of the attack.

RIYADH: Chairman of the newly formed Presidential Leadership Council in Yemen Rashad Al-Alimi pledged on Friday to end the war and establish a comprehensive and urgent peace process.
Speaking a day after he was appointed to lead the council, Al-Alimi affirmed full commitment to the Gulf initiative, the Riyadh Agreement, and the Yemeni national dialogue. 
“We will work to achieve the demands of Yemenis without exception or discrimination,” he said, calling on Yemenis to rally around state institutions.
More to follow…

LONDON: The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen David Gressly renews the warning of the danger of the Safer oil tanker.
Developing…

AL-MUKALLA: Fierce fighting broke out on Friday on the outskirts of Yemen’s central city of Marib after the Iran-backed Houthis mounted a new attack on government forces defending the strategic location.

The Yemeni Defense Ministry said that army troops and allied tribesmen were fending off a major Houthi assault at flashpoint sites in Juba district, south of Marib.

The attack has been described as the biggest since April 2, the first day of a two-month truce brokered by the UN.

Yemen’s government has accused the Houthis of exploiting the ceasefire and absence of Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen warplanes by mobilizing new forces and military equipment including tanks, artillery, and BMP infantry fighting vehicles.

The army said that the Houthis had committed at least 100 violations of the truce in contested areas in Hodeidah, Jouf, Taiz, Saada, Hajjah, and Marib. The Houthis accused the Yemeni government of attacking their forces in Marib on Friday.

Energy-rich Marib has seen the bloodiest and most aggressive fighting in the war since earlier last year when the Houthis resumed an offensive to control the city.

Thousands of combatants and civilians have been killed outside the city and the group rejected calls to end its attacks that have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in the country.

Under the terms of the longest truce since the beginning of the conflict, warring factions in Yemen were to halt hostilities on all fronts in addition to stopping cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Sanaa airport would open for two flights to Egypt and Jordan each week, and 18 fuel ships would be allowed to enter the western port of Hodeidah.

Yemen’s former President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi on Thursday transferred his powers to a presidential council of eight members to run the country and engage in peace talks with the Houthis.

Houthi spokesman, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, on Thursday rejected the formation of the presidential council and the outcomes of Yemeni-Yemeni consultations in Riyadh, claiming the council was meant to reorganize the ranks of their opponents before pushing them into the battlefields to fight them.

CAIRO: Thousands of Sudanese marched in the capital of Khartoum and other cities on Wednesday in new protests against an October military coup that plunged the African country into political turmoil and aggravated its economic woes.
It was the latest in efforts to pressure the ruling generals, whose takeover has triggered near-daily street protests demanding civilian rule. Called by pro-democracy groups, the demonstrators marched in Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman amid tight security around the presidential palace, which has seen violent clashes in previous protests.
There were also rallies elsewhere, including in Qadarif and Port Sudan in the east and war-ravaged Darfur region in the west. Footage on social media, which corresponded with The Associated Press reporting, shows young people setting tires on fire and blocking roads.
The army’s takeover upended Sudan’s transition to democracy after three decades of repression and international isolation under autocratic President Omar Al-Bashir. It also sent the country’s already fragile economy into free fall, with living conditions rapidly deteriorating. A popular uprising forced the military to remove Al-Bashir and his Islamist government in April 2019.
Since the coup, a crackdown on protesters has killed more than 90 people, mostly young men, and injured thousands, according to a Sudanese medical group.
Western governments and world financial institutions suspended their assistance to Sudan in order to pressure the generals to return to civilian-led government.
The UN envoy for Sudan warned last month that the country was heading for “an economic and security collapse” unless it addresses the political paralysis following the coup.
Wednesday’s marches were called for by the Sudanese Professionals’ Association and the so-called Resistance Committees, which were the backbone of the uprising against Al-Bashir and have also spearheaded the ongoing anti-coup protests. They demand an immediate handover to a fully civilian government, the removal of the generals behind the coup and holding them accountable in “swift and fair trails.”
The US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday urged Sudan’s military rulers to allow peaceful protests to “continue without fear of violence.”
President Joe Biden’s administration last month imposed sanctions on Sudan’s Central Reserve Police, which it described as a militarized unit of the country’s police forces, for using violence against pro-democracy protests.
The latest protests come on the third anniversary of the beginning of a sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum that accelerated the removal of Al-Bashir.
They also come on the 37th anniversary of the overthrow of President Jaafar Al-Nimeiri in a bloodless coup in 1985 after a popular uprising. At the time, the military quickly handed power to an elected government.
However, the dysfunctional administration lasted only a few years until Al-Bashir — a career army officer — forged an alliance with Islamist hard-liners and toppled it in a 1989 coup.