Palestinians clash with Israeli police in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, Feb 16 (Reuters) Israeli police clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians in Arab East Jerusalem after prayers today as hundreds protested against excavations and planned construction work near Islam's third holiest site.

A police spokesman said officers fired stun grenades at stone throwers and arrested 15 protesters after Friday prayers. He said some of the demonstrators tried to break into restricted areas.

''The police dispersed a number of disturbances in the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood (of East Jerusalem),'' spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

In a number of towns and checkpoints throughout the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops used tear gas to disperse stone-throwing Palestinian youths, local witnesses said.

Two Israeli soldiers were shot and lightly wounded by Palestinian gunmen in clashes at a checkpoint near Jerusalem, an army spokeswoman said.

The dig is intended to salvage ancient artefacts before construction can begin on a new walkway leading to the holy complex known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount.

Muslims say they fear the mosque could be harmed.

Israel denies any harm would come to al-Aqsa mosque or to the golden Dome of the Rock that stand on the site of two destroyed biblical Jewish Temples.

The dig sparked violent protests after prayers last Friday.

Israeli officials have said the dig, about 50 metres (yards) from the compound overlooking the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, would last at least eight months and that no work on a walkway would start before it is completed.

The existing ramp leading to the complex was damaged in a snowstorm and in an earthquake in 2004 and officials say the structure is dangerous and must be replaced.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a visit to Ankara on Thursday that a Turkish team would visit Jerusalem to survey the site. ''We have nothing to hide,'' he said.

Israel is also showing live pictures from the excavation on the Web site of its antiquities authority in a bid to show that the work is doing no structural harm.

Reuters KR DB2151