An Israeli settler on Wednesday desecrated a Muslim cemetery in the occupied East Jerusalem by hanging a donkey's head.

"A settler stormed the Bab al-Rahma cemetery and hung a ‘donkey's head' on a grave there," the Jerusalem governor's office said in a statement.

Photographs circulating on social media showed the head of a donkey hanging from a fence of the cemetery, which is adjacent to the Golden Gate, the oldest in the Old City and the only one to be walled.

"A Jewish extremist slit the throat of a donkey today at the Golden Gate cemetery before hanging it over the Muslim graves there," the Waqf Islamic affairs council said in a statement.

"It was a serious desecration of one of the main historic Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem."

The Bab al-Rahma is an ancient Muslim cemetery that has been an endowment property for more than 1,400 years. It contains numerous graves of notable companions of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Israeli police later said they had arrested an Israeli suspected of having desecrated the Muslim cemetery.

Describing the 35-year-old as "unbalanced," police said he was arrested after they were alerted that a man had "broken the law and disrupted public order by hanging the head of a donkey" at the cemetery.

Police said the man was carrying an axe at the time of his arrest, adding that another suspect who allegedly had helped in taking him there was also in custody.

The cemetery is near the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews and is at the heart of tensions between Palestinians and Israelis.

The compound, also home to the Dome of the Rock, is Islam's holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It lies directly above the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews are allowed to pray.

In recent years, nationalist Jews have stormed the compound multiple times, sparking anger among Palestinians who see this as a provocation.

The incident also comes at a time when tension has been running high across the West Bank amid a brutal Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 21,110 people, most of them women and children, since Oct. 7, according to local health authorities.

Defending Al-Aqsa was cited by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas as the main reason for its Oct. 7 deadly incursion of Israel.