Israeli police raided a Palestinian neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem overnight and arrested 51 people accused of violent protests against security forces, authorities said Monday.
The 51 Palestinian suspects from Issawiya were arrested for participating in recent “riots and terror-related incidents,” including throwing stones and firebombs at security forces, a police statement said.
Palestinian youths in parts of east Jerusalem regularly clash with Israeli security forces during protests against Israel’s occupation.
Police had raided Issawiya along with a number of other Palestinian neighborhoods in east Jerusalem three months ago, when tensions rose and clashes erupted after Israel placed metal detectors at the entrance to a Jerusalem holy site.
The metal detectors were put in place after a deadly shooting in which 1948 Palestinian gunmen emerged from Al-Aqsa Mosque and killed two police officers.
Since then, the situation in Issawiya and other Palestinian areas has largely been calm.
Separately, three Palestinians who went missing from a tunnel between Egypt and the Gaza Strip in mysterious circumstances Monday morning have been located, authorities in the Hamas-run territory said, after indications they had been kidnapped.
A source told AFP “the three were kidnapped by mistake by gunmen probably belonging to an extremist Salafist group but were returned because they were not the target.”
The three men are currently under investigation at the Interior Ministry in Gaza, the source added.
One witness told AFP earlier that a group of masked gunmen snatched the three and took them across the border into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The account of the witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not confirmed by authorities.
Egyptian security forces have been fighting a branch of Daesh (ISIS) in the Sinai, and the militants have recently stepped up their attacks.
In August, a suicide bomber killed a Hamas guard along Gaza’s border with Egypt in what was described as a rare Islamist attack against the Palestinian group.
In 2015, gunmen seized four Hamas members from a bus bound for Cairo from the Gaza Strip in the Sinai near the border.
Egypt has cracked down on tunnels crossing from Gaza into the Sinai, and Hamas has agreed to improve security along the border.
Tunnels between Gaza and Egypt are typically used for smuggling.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for more than a decade, while Egypt has also kept its border with the Palestinian enclave largely closed in recent years.
Hamas and Israel have fought three wars since 2008.
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