A bus carrying a group of Canadians on their first day touring the Holy Land was bombarded with bricks, stones and bottles yesterday by a mob of Palestinian youths protesting against a new Israeli construction project near the Al Aqsa Mosque.

"It was quite disturbing to say the least," one of the Canadians, Dave Wood, told the Associated Press after the bus was attacked on the Mount of Olives, where Christians believe Jesus Christ ascended to heaven.

"We were just driving and all of a sudden a bunch of kids started picking up rocks and whatever they could get their hands on and started throwing it at the bus."

Israeli police dressed in heavy riot gear and armed with assault weapons and tear-gas launchers rescued the anxious Canadians before anyone was injured.

The police then played a sometimes violent game of cat-and-mouse for several hours with the protesters, who had blocked several roads with huge garbage bins that they had set ablaze and pelted any cars which they believed were driven by Israelis with softball-sized projectiles.

As they had done after Friday prayers outside the Al Aqsa Mosque - which is revered as Islam's third holiest site - police broke up yesterday's protests on the Mount of Olives by repeatedly firing volleys of tear gas and throwing tear-gas canisters towards the rioters.

They then chased them into narrow side streets that looked down on Jerusalem's walled Old City, which, because it is sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians, has often been a flashpoint for religiously driven violence.

By the time a semblance of calm was finally restored just before dusk, 19 Palestinians had been arrested.

More trouble was expected in the Holy City in the coming days as Muslim protests continued to grow over the excavations. The digging, which began last Tuesday about 50 metres from the mosque, was undertaken with the approval of Israeli Prime Ehud Olmert in order to make sure that no antiquities were disturbed before work begins to repair a wooden footbridge that was damaged in a storm three years ago.

The work site is even closer to the Western Wall, which is Judaism's holiest place.

It was Ariel Sharon's surprise tour in September, 2000, of what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount, that triggered the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.

The fear on both Israeli and Palestinian sides is that the extremely high tensions that always arise whenever the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Temple Mount are the centre of attention could explode into a much more dangerous conflict.

The dispute has already caused an uproar across the Islamic world with protests in Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon and demands by the leaders of Jordan, Malaysia and Indonesia that the international community intervene to stop the work.

(Copyright Montreal Gazette 2007)