Jewish settlers burn old church in Jerusalem

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– A group of extremist Jewish settlers set a one hundred year old Christian church on fire in Jerusalem on Friday causing substantial damage to its first floor.

Zakaria Al-Mashriqi, a leader in the church, denounced in a press release the “sinful crime” that targets destabilizing relations among heavenly religions and inciting strife in addition to expelling Palestinians from the holy city through such repeated attacks on citizens and their property.

He added that the church was built in Jerusalem in 1897, and housed the Palestinian Bible College until 1948, when parishioners were pushed out by Jewish armed gangs during the violence accompanying the creation of the state of Israel.

He said that right-wing Israeli settlers broke a number of windows of the two-storey church and hurled Molotov cocktails inside it completely burning the first floor.

Mashriqi appealed for urgent intervention to protect the holy places in Jerusalem and called on the Israeli government to act responsibly and condemn the attack, and work on investigating the attack to find out who was involved and file charges in the case.

The world community must shoulder its responsibility toward protecting the holy shrines and Palestinians in the city, he said, calling for shunning violence and for dialog among religions.