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Israeli police storm Jerusalem holy site

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-25 16:08

The golden shrine of the Dome of the Rock mosque, located in the al-Aqsa mosque compound, or Temple Mount, can be seen as hundreds of Jewish worshippers, bottom, gather at Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism holiest site, in this Monday October 4, 2004, file photo. [Agencies]

JERUSALEM: Israeli police forces raided Jerusalem's famed Temple Mount on Sunday after Palestinian demonstrators pelted them with stones, police said.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said security forces used stun grenades to disperse the demonstrators and arrested 12 people. He said the protesters also poured oil on the ground to make the police forces slip and hurled a fire bomb.

Israeli security forces stayed on top the compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, while a few hundred worshippers remain inside the mosque there.

There were no reports of injuries on either side.

Israel's medical services were put on high alert in case of further clashes.

Ben-Ruby said police did not enter mosque itself. The site houses the gold-capped Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. It is Jerusalem's holiest site for both Muslims and Jews.

Israel captured the compound from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War and it has since served as a symbol of the two sides' competing claims to Jerusalem.

Jews venerate the site as the location of two biblical temples, but day-to-day administration remains in Muslim hands.

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Muslim leaders have called on Palestinians to defend the site against what they called Jewish conquest. Following Sunday's clashes, Muslim clerics at the site renewed those calls from the mosques.

There have been repeated rumors among Palestinians that Jewish extremists are planning to harm the holy site. No such attempts have been made.

Two weeks ago, though, the rumors also sparked a series of sporadic clashes in and around the site between police and worshippers. There were no serious injuries.