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LONDON: Over the past 12 months, at least 58,310 Israeli settlers have stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, a 14 percent increase on the number the previous year, according to the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs.

It recorded the significant increase in incursions between Oct. 2, 2024, and Sept. 22 of this year. In recent weeks, hundreds of settlers have entered Al-Aqsa Mosque to mark various Jewish holidays, including Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, which began on Oct. 6 and lasts for a week.

The Awqaf reported that in September, Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa compound 26 times, with protection from the Israeli police and occasionally accompanied by officials and ministers.

In the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, in the West Bank, the Awqaf reported that Israeli forces prevented the call to prayer 92 times in September, as part of attempts to impose temporal and spatial division.

The ministry added that these practices seriously infringe on the sanctity of Islamic religious sites, creating a new reality in Jerusalem and Hebron.

It said that performing Jewish rituals inside Al-Aqsa Mosque provokes the feelings of Muslims, and attempts to alter the identity of Jerusalem and its Islamic holy sites.

It urged the international community to intervene to stop these violations, the Wafa news agency reported.

CASABLANCA: French wheat exporters will supply Morocco with two thirds of its soft wheat needs, or 3.5 million metric tons, in the 2025-2026 season, Philippe Heusele, international head at French grain industry group Intercereales, said on Tuesday.
Morocco is expected to import 5.5 million tons of soft wheat, its main staple, this market year from June to the end of May 2026, according to estimates by Moroccan traders and French grains association Synacomex.
Morocco has reported below-average harvests in recent years because of drought. This season it reported a soft wheat harvest of 2.4 million tons.
Despite the weak domestic harvest, stockpiles remain at a “comfortable level,” covering more than three months of industrial millers’ needs, said Abdelkader Alaoui, president of the FNM industrial milling federation.
Moroccan traders attending an Intercereales conference in Casablanca see the French harvest as best positioned, given its availability and proximity to Moroccan ports compared with other origins such as the Black Sea region and Argentina.
“We are also looking at Russian, German and Polish wheat as well as Argentina, where prices are interesting,” said Omar Yacoubi, head of FNCL, Morocco’s grain traders federation.
From June to September, Morocco imported 1.5 million tons of soft wheat, including 996,368 tons from France, followed by the United States (94,688 tons), Russia (85,499 tons) and Lithuania (63,000 tons), FNCL data shows.