Officers entered the Al Aqsa Mosque compound after Muslim worshippers threw stones at police deployed nearby, police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

Ben-Ruby said the rock throwers were quickly subdued.

The mosque compound is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, site of biblical Jewish temples. The walled site is revered by Muslims and Jews and is one of the flashpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

AFP adds: The UN's Palestinian refugee agency on Thursday halted food distribution to 600,000 people in the Gaza Strip, saying it was out of supplies due to new Israeli security restrictions.

Israel has barred shipments of empty food containers out of Gaza after a deadly suicide bombing last month in which the attackers may have been smuggled inside one of the containers.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said that it had to suspend food shipments in response in order to avoid an expensive bottleneck.

"If the new restrictions in Gaza continue, I fear we could see real hunger emerge for the first time in two generations," said UNRWA director Peter Hansen.

"Israel's legitimate and serious security concerns will not be served by hindering the emergency relief work of the United Nations," he said.

UNRWA said it normally delivers 250 tonnes of food to Gaza daily, but that now the supplies have run out.

"Stocks of rice, flour, cooking oil and other essential foodstuffs that UNRWA provides to refugees reduced to poverty, or otherwise affected by a humanitarian crisis now in its 42nd month, have been fully depleted," it said.