{Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has outraged Israeli leaders by calling the attempted assassin of a Jewish ultra-rightwing rabbi a “martyr” and the soldiers who killed him “terrorist gangs”.}
Abbas on Sunday sent a letter of condolence to the family of 32-year-old Muataz Hijazi, killed by Israeli police who said he had tried to murder Yehuda Glick.
The US-born Glick, who was seriously wounded in the shooting attack, is an ultranationalist whose demand that Jews be allowed to pray at the Al-Aqsa compound in east Jerusalem outrages Muslims.
The compound — which Jews call the Temple Mount — is the third holiest site in Islam and regarded as the holiest in Judaism as the location of the first and second temples.
In his letter, which AFP has seen, Abbas expressed his “anger and condemnation after news of the criminal, despicable assassination by the Israeli occupation army’s terrorist gangs of Muataz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi, who died a martyr defending the rights of our people and the holy places”.
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