Israeli forces ceil yard Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque: Palestinian official

Israeli forces ceiled the yard of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron in an attempt to change its features, a Palestinian official said on Thursday.

"The Israeli authorities are constantly seeking to change the features of the mosque and Judaize it," Ghassan al-Rajabi, an official with the Hebron Endowments Authority, told Anadolu.

He termed the Israeli move as a "grave assault" on the Muslim worship place.

"The mosque is a purely Islamic endowment and Israeli authorities have no right to it," he said.

"Israel is exploiting the state of war (in Gaza) to implement their agenda by seizing holy sites," al-Rajabi said.

After the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers in 1994 inside the mosque by Jewish extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein, Israeli authorities divided the mosque complex between Muslim and Jewish worshippers.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee decided in July 2017 to include the Ibrahimi Mosque and the old city of Hebron on its World Heritage List.

Hebron is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 500 Jewish settlers. The latter live in a series of Jewish-only enclaves heavily guarded by Israeli troops.

Tension has been running high in the occupied West Bank amid a deadly Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which killed nearly 38,300 people since Oct. 7, 2023.

At least 571 Palestinians, including at least 133 children, have since been killed and nearly 5,350 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the Health Ministry.

Israel stands accused of "genocide" at the International Court of Justice, which, in its latest ruling, has ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its military operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.