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90,000 attend Ramadan's 1st Friday prayers at Aqsa
Gulf Today
|March 08, 2025
In the first Friday prayers of the Holy Month of Ramadan, about 90,000 Palestinians prayed at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City under tight security by Israeli forces.
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For many Palestinians, Friday marked their first opportunity to enter Jerusalem since last Ramadan about a year ago, when Israel also let in worshippers under similar restrictions. Limited number of older West Bank Palestinians allowed to attend Friday prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque.
An Israeli drone strike killed two people in Gaza on Friday, local Palestinian medical authorities said, underscoring the uncertainty surrounding a fragile ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in the enclave for weeks.
Meanwhile, the Muslim world will be asked to throw its weight behind an Arab counter-plan to US President Donald Trump's widely condemned proposal to take over war-torn Gaza at an emergency meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Foreign ministers from the 57-member Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will meet at its headquarters in Jeddah, three days after the Arab League endorsed Egypt's alternative plan for Gaza.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said his country, a mediator in the Hamas-Israel ceasefire talks, would seek OIC support to make the counter-proposal "both an Arab plan and an Islamic plan."
This story is from the March 08, 2025 edition of Gulf Today.
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