Israeli troops carried out on Friday a raid on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, arresting a number of youths suspected of clashing with forces outside the compound. A police spokesman said the troopers were sent into al-Aqsa, Islam’s third holiest site, after suspects who had barricaded themselves in after running confrontations in the surrounding compound, during which masked men launched firecrackers from handheld canisters. There was no immediate word of any violence in the mosque, whose older male worshippers said they had been allowed to exit after being searched. Witnesses later saw around 20 younger men detained by police, and said mosque prayers later resumed. Police put the number of arrests at 24, and said four of its officers were injured in the melee. Muslim authorities said dozens of people were hurt by Israeli police stun grenades. “The continued Israeli attacks against occupied Jerusalem will increase tensions and will drag the region into a religious war that we have long warned against,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s office said in a statement. The rare raid, on a site that is an icon of Palestinians’ statehood hopes and a frequent catalyst of their conflict with Israel, came as medics in Gaza said Israeli army gunfire killed a man taking part in weekly border protests. Al-Aqsa compound was among areas Israel captured in a 1967 war with Jordan, which retains a stewardship role at the mosque. In Gaza, medics said a man was killed and 45 other people wounded by army fire, bringing to 153 the Palestinian death toll during weekly demonstrations launched on March 30 to demand rights to land lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its founding. The dead man was identified as 43-year-old Ghazi Abu Mustafa. The four months of Gaza tensions have also seen cross-border shelling and gunfire exchange. Over the last week, an Israeli soldier was killed and another wounded by what the army said were Gaza snipers, and seven Hamas gunmen died in air strikes. Israel has also lost tracts of farmland and forests to fires set by kites and helium balloons, laden with incendiary material and flown over from Gaza. The Israelis have responded by preventing the entry of non-essential commercial goods to Gaza.