THE TELEGRAPH: Violence erupted at Jerusalem's holiest site on Sunday when Israeli riot police clashed with stone-throwing Palestinian protestors.
The most serious unrest in Jerusalem's sacred Old City in five months came after days of disturbances in the West Bank triggered by a declaration that two Jewish shrines on Palestinian territory would be declared Israeli heritage sites.
At least 14 protestors and four policemen were hurt during the clashes as battles raged both in the winding alleyways of Jerusalem's walled Old City and at the hilltop compound of the al-Aqsa mosque where the trouble first started.
According to Israeli police, Palestinian protesters inside the al-Aqsa mosque, held by Muslims to mark the spot that the Prophet Mohammed ascended into Heaven, threw stones at a group of tourists visiting the compound.
The youths believed the tourists to be Jewish radicals intent on reclaiming the compound, which also houses the Dome of the Rock, for Israel.
Marking the spot where the two Hebrew temples of antiquity once stood, the compound is venerated by both the Jews, who call it the Temple Mount, and by Muslims, for whom it is the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.
The clashes erupted on the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the deliverance of the Israelites from the Persian vizier Haman. >>> Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem | Sunday, February 28, 2010
