The Latest: UN rights body votes for inquiry on Gaza

JERUSALEM — The Latest on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

The U.N.’s top human rights body has voted to set up a commission of inquiry to look into a deadly crackdown on protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces.

The U.N. Human Rights Council, meeting in a special session Friday in Geneva, voted 29-2 with 14 abstentions to back a resolution that also condemned “the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians.”

Israel condemned the resolution, which was put forward by a group of countries including Pakistan. The United States decried it as an example of a biased focus on Israel by the council. Both lamented that it didn’t mention Gaza’s Hamas rulers, whom Israel blames for the violence.

The commission of inquiry will be asked to produce a final report next March.

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5:40 p.m.

Israeli police say the first Friday prayer services of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ended peacefully at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says over 90,000 attended prayers at the holy site.

Israeli security forces are on high alert as the Muslim fasting month begins this year amid heightened tensions along the Gaza border fence.

Israeli fire killed nearly 60 Palestinians at a mass rally there on Monday.

The high casualty count has drawn sharp international condemnations against Israel and accusations that it is using excessive force.

Israel accuses Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, of exploiting civilians and using the protests as cover for attacks.

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5:45 p.m.

Arab foreign ministers are holding an emergency meeting three days after the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and violence along the Gaza border, where Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians.

The Arab League has already condemned the relocation of the embassy, and it was not clear whether it would take any further action following Thursday’s meeting at its headquarters in Cairo.

The Trump administration’s relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem upended decades of U.S. policy and went against an international consensus that the holy city’s status should be settled through negotiations. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state.

Mass protests in Gaza on Monday were directed at the embassy move and at an Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza imposed after the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power in 2007. Israeli forces killed nearly 60 Palestinians at mass protests along the border. A Hamas official says 50 were members of the group.

Egypt, which hosts the Arab League, rarely opens its Rafah passenger crossing with Gaza, the only gateway from the impoverished territory not controlled by Israel.

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10 a.m.

The Israeli military says it has carried out airstrikes on militant sites in Gaza overnight in response to machine gun fire that hit a building in the Israeli city of Sderot.

The army said Thursday that planes bombarded a military compound and a weapons production facility in the northern Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian health ministry says a man was moderately wounded by shrapnel, but didn’t say whether he was inside a militant site or nearby.

The airstrikes Thursday came hours after Israeli forces came under fire from the Palestinian territory. The military said no troops were wounded in Wednesday’s exchange.

Israeli fire killed nearly 60 Palestinians on Monday during a protest along the Gaza border. A senior Hamas official said 50 of those killed were members of the militant group.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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