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LONDON: The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has warned about the consequences of imposing Israeli settler control over the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron city, south of the occupied West Bank, on Wednesday.

The ministry said that Israel’s decision to transfer the management of the mosque, known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs, to a settlement council is “an unprecedented move to impose control over it, Judaize it, alter its identity, and a blatant violation of international law and UN resolutions.”

Israeli media reported on Wednesday that the Israeli Civil Administration, which operates under the Ministry of Defense and governs the West Bank, has transferred the management and supervision of the Ibrahimi Mosque from the Hebron municipality to the religious council of the Kiryat Arba settlement.

The ministry called on UNESCO, which had designated the Ibrahimi Mosque as a World Heritage site in 2017, to urgently intervene and halt the implementation of this plan.

Tayseer Abu Sneineh, mayor of Hebron, stressed that “the transfer of the powers of the Ibrahimi Mosque administration (to the settlement’s religious council) is an assault on the civilization of the city and a blatant violation of international law.”

Abu Sneineh said that the Israeli Civil Administration, officially known as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, has not yet officially handed over the decision to the city’s municipality.

He said that Israeli violations of the Ibrahimi Mosque’s sanctity began shortly after the city and West Bank were occupied in 1967, when settlers held a collective wedding at the site.

“We reject the decision in full, and consider it a political, cultural and religious aggression against the city of Hebron,” Abu Sneineh told Wafa news agency.

Sheikh Moataz Abu Sneineh, director of the Ibrahimi Mosque, said they have not received official notification about the transfer of administration powers, emphasizing that the mosque is a purely Islamic site and part of Islamic endowment property.

The Ibrahimi Mosque is in Hebron’s Old City, where about 400 settlers are protected by around 1,500 Israeli soldiers and surrounded by numerous military checkpoints.

Since 1994, Israel has spatially divided the Ibrahimi Mosque into 63 percent for Jews and 37 percent for Muslims, after a massacre by an extremist settler that killed 29 Palestinian worshipers at the site.

QUETTA: Three people were killed while 12 others were injured in Pakistan’s southwestern Kalat district on Wednesday, police and an official confirmed, after unidentified men opened fire on a passenger bus headed toward Quetta.

Kalat Station House Office (SHO) Habibullah Baloch said unidentified armed men shot indiscriminately at a passenger bus from Karachi headed toward Quetta on Wednesday. The attack took place near Nimragh Cross in Kalat district, located on the N-25 highway connecting Balochistan to the southern port city of Karachi.

“Three passengers, residents of Karachi, were killed in the attack and 12 others were wounded,” Baloch told Arab News, adding that the injured were shifted to the District Hospital Kalat for treatment.

The police official said the attackers did not stop the bus to check the National Identity Cards (NICs) of the passengers before firing at them, adding that the gunmen “sprayed” the vehicle with bullets.

He said dozens of passengers were traveling in the bus, adding that most of them were residents of Karachi.

Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind condemned the attack in a statement.

“The security forces have surrounded the area and a hunt for the attackers is underway,” Rind said.

The latest attack has taken place after gunmen abducted and killed nine people last week when they stopped two passenger buses on a highway in Balochistan’s Zhob and Loralai districts. Those buses were traveling from Quetta to the eastern Punjab province.

Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but most impoverished province, has been the site of a long-running insurgency that has intensified in recent months, with separatist militants attacking security forces, government officials and installations and people from other provinces, particularly Punjab, the country’s most populous and prosperous province and a major recruitment base for the military.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) is the strongest of a number of insurgent groups operating in the mineral-rich region bordering Afghanistan and Iran. The group accuses the central government of stealing their resources to fund development in Punjab and other parts of the country. The federal government denies the allegations and says it is working for the uplift of local communities in Balochistan, where China has been building a deep-sea port as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

Pakistan accuses India of backing separatists in Balochistan as well as religiously motivated militant groups, like the Pakistani Taliban, in its northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. New Delhi denies the allegations.

Balochistan has seen a rise in militant attacks since last year. Last August, nearly two dozen passengers were killed after BLA militants forcibly removed them from Punjab-bound buses in a string of coordinated attacks in Balochistan. Another seven Punjabi commuters were offboarded from buses and killed in Balochistan’s Barkhan district in February this year.

In March, BLA separatists hijacked a train that carried hundreds of passengers near Balochistan’s Bolan Pass, which resulted in the deaths of 23 soldiers, three railway employees and five passengers. At least 33 insurgents were also killed.