Violence flares as Israeli police clash with Palestinians at the entrance to the 8th-century Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third most sacred place

Israeli police dispersed dozens of masked Palestinians who threw rocks and firecrackers near the contested Holy site in Jerusalem's Old City in response to a visit by a group of Jewish activists.

The footage was taken a few hours before an attack at a train station in east Jerusalem when a border police officer was killed by a Palestinian who ran over several people with his car, killing one and injuring 14 others.

The Palestinian man rammed a car into a crowded train stop and then attacked people with an iron bar after leaving the vehicle, before he was shot dead by police.

The militant Hamas group took responsibility for the attack – the second such assault in east Jerusalem in the past two weeks – which escalated already heightened tensions between Arabs and Jews in the city.

The roots of the unrest are many: from the killing in July of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists – apparently in revenge for the killing of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinians – to increased settlement building in East Jerusalem, the war in Gaza and a push by ultranationalist Jews to be allowed to pray at one of Islam's holiest sites.

The result is the greatest period of unrest the city has experienced since the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, began in 2000, a five-year period of conflict that left around 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead.

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