A church in Jerusalem. (Credit: AFP)
Israeli police Saturday shot dead a Palestinian Israeli man at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound after they say he took an officer's weapon and fired it in a scuffle.
The deceased was identified as Mohammed al-Asibi, a 26-year-old medical student from the Bedouin village of Hura, in southern Israel.
Asibi's family has disputed the police account of his death and demanded to see CCTV footage, local media said. Israeli police claim there was no CCTV footage.
In a statement, police said Asibi was stopped near the Old City's Chain Gate, an access point to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem.
As he was being questioned, the statement said, Asibi "suddenly attacked one of the policemen," grabbed his gun and fired it.
"In a swift response of officers, who were in danger and struggling with the terrorist, they shot him," the statement said, adding that medics later pronounced the man dead.
One Western news agency estimates that Israel's security apparatus has so far killed at least 86 Palestinians since the start of 2023.
Passers-by reported hearing gunfire, and an AFP photographer saw scores of Israeli police deployed in the Old City at around 1:00 am (2200 GMT on Friday).
Raam, the Israeli parliament's Islamist party, rejected the police account of events, noting in a Facebook post the claims from "witnesses" who said Asibi had come to aid a woman who was in a scuffle with police.
Mansour Abbas, Raam's head, expressed skepticism of authorities' claim that there was no footage of the alleged attack.
"This is a cover-up attempt to hide the truth," Raam said on Twitter, demanding an immediate investigation.
Rahat and Tel Sheva, two large Bedouin communities in southern Israel, Saturday joined a general strike launched in Hura following the incident, Israeli media reported.
Standing by their original version of events, Israeli police issued another statement Saturday afternoon claiming "the attack itself was not recorded on security cameras or on the body cameras of the police officers."
They also rejected the notion a woman was involved, saying Asibi "arrived alone," and that officers were suspicious of his presence at the compound after closing hours.
The shooting occurred hours after tens of thousands of Palestinians had packed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound for peaceful prayers on the second Friday of Ramadan.
Israeli police said more than 100,000 faithful had gathered to pray at Islam's third holiest site, built on what Jews call the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site.
More than 2,000 police officers had been deployed throughout the city.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has witnessed an upsurge of violence since the beginning of the year, raising fears of a flare-up during Ramadan. A relative lull in violence has marked the first 10 days of holy month of fasting.