Egypt cleric says al-Aqsa dig a "sinful aggression"

CAIRO, Feb 7 (Reuters) Egypt's top Muslim cleric called Israeli excavations near a compound housing the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem a ''sinful aggression'' and appealed today for global action to protect Islam's third holiest shrine.

Israel began the work yesterday, prompting Palestinian protests and Israeli assurances the dig would not harm the shrine.

''Whoever can write should write. Whoever has a word to say should say it. Whoever can defend al-Aqsa using art should do so,'' Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi told reporters.

He called for immediate intervention by the UN Security Council and ''all international organisations, governments and peoples''.

Tantawi is the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar mosque, one of the oldest and most prominent seats of Sunni Muslim religious thinking.

Asked whether Muslims should invoke Jihad, or holy struggle, to protect al-Aqsa, he said: ''Jihad is a religious duty on every person, to do what is in their capacity to do.'' Jihad, while it is often used by militant groups to mean warfare against perceived enemies of Islam, can also mean a spiritual or internal struggle.

Israel's antiquities authority said it was searching for artefacts at the base of the compound known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount before construction of a pedestrian bridge to replace a ramp leading up to the complex.

Israel's opening of an entrance to an archaeological tunnel near the Haram al-Sharif in 1996 triggered Palestinian protests and led to clashes in which 61 Arabs and 15 Israeli soldiers were killed.

REUTERS BDP RAI2120