Al-Aqsa, new irruption of Zionist settlers

Dozens of Jewish extremists, under the heavy protection of occupation troops, raided the al-Aqsa mosque compound in the occupied old… city of al-Quds, evidence of growing Israeli violence against Palestinians. The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that the extremist settlers, divided into groups, entered the courtyards of the holy site through the Morocco Gate, also known as the Mughrabi Gate, and made a provocative tour of the premises on Tuesday. The news agency added that the settlers performed Talmudic rituals in the eastern part of the al-Aqsa mosque, in violation of the site's status quo.

Occupation troops also deployed soldiers in and around the mosque to protect the settlers' raid. Israeli settler raids on al-Aqsa mosque and violence against Palestinians have been on the rise since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right extremist cabinet took office last December. Iran thanks OIC for agreeing to meet on desecration of Quran Iranian foreign minister thanks Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for agreeing to hold emergency meeting of intergovernmental body foreign ministers on recent heinous acts of desecration of the Holy Quran in Sweden and Denmark. In a tweet on Tuesday, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian expressed his gratitude to OIC Secretary General Hissein Brahim Taha and the foreign ministers of Iran's Muslim countries for accepting an earlier proposal made by the Islamic Republic and Iraq to the extraordinary meeting.

“Our common goal is [to enable] an effective and deterrent measure to prevent the repetition of insults against the Noble Quran and other divine scriptures,” the tweet added. Speaking earlier, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan'ani announced that the meeting would be held on July 31. The developments came after an Iraqi refugee living in Sweden, identified as Salwan Momika, desecrated the Muslims' holy book. He committed the sacrilegious act first in front of Stockholm's largest mosque in late June, and a second time in front of the Iraqi embassy in the same city on Thursday, under the strict protection provided by Swedish police. And on Friday, members of an Islamophobic Danish group called Danske Patrioter desecrated the Koran outside the Iraqi embassy in Denmark's capital Copenhagen. Also on Tuesday, the small far-right group set fire to copies of the Koran outside the Egyptian and Turkish embassies in the Danish capital, in another blasphemous act against the Muslim holy book.