Israeli police assault Palestinians at Damascus Gate, including 11-year-old girl

A young Palestinian girl was one of several Palestinians to be brutally assaulted by Israeli police forces in occupied East Jerusalem on Monday, as hundreds of Muslims gathered in the city to commemorate a religious occasion. 

Videos and photos flooded social media on Monday, showing armed Israeli forces brutalizing Palestinians outside the Damascus Gate area of the Old City in East Jerusalem.

One of the videos to go viral on Palestinian social media was of volunteer medics rushing to carry out a young girl with a bloodied face and evacuate her in an ambulance, as Israeli police watched on. 

The girl was identified as 11-year-old Munawar Burqan, who according to her mother is disabled. She was injured in the face with a stun grenade, and reportedly suffered from a broken jaw and deep gashes in her face. 

Footage shows police officers firing stun grenades at the crowd, hitting people with batons, and assaulting a number of unidentified Palestinian youth, while photos showed officers kneeling on the neck of a young Palestinian man. 

Israeli forces also fired tanks of ‘skunk water’, rancid-smelling sewage water used by Israeli forces as a “crowd dispersal” method,  at crowds of bystanders outside Damascus Gate. 

At least one young woman, identified as 15-year-old Iman Kiswani, was reportedly detained by Israeli police after being assaulted, and was released on a bail of 500 NIS ($155) and was banned from the Damascus Gate area and the Old City of Jerusalem for 30 days. 

Hundreds of Muslim worshipers had gathered in and around the Old City to mark al-Isra wal-Miraj, the day when Muslims believe that Prophet Muhammad traveled on a night journey from Mecca to the al-Aqsa Mosque before ascending to the heavens.

The festival falls one month before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. 

The month of Ramadan last year saw massive crackdowns by Israeli police forces on Palestinian worshipers at the Damascus Gate and inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, sparking massive protests across Palestine, and an 11-day Israeli offensive on Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians.