By DPA 
A Turkish mission sent to Israel to inspect controversial work by Israeli archaeologists at the Mugrabi Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem will advise that all work should stop immediately and that Palestinians must be consulted before any further work goes ahead, according to a report published Friday in the English-language newspaper Today's Zaman.
"The archaeological excavation at the Mugrabi pathway, which involves various traces of the Umayyad, Ayyubid, Mameluke and Ottoman periods, must be discontinued immediately," Today's Zaman on Friday quoted from the as yet unreleased report
The Turkish mission visited the site in March to inspect work on an entrance to the mosque and excavations in the area. The archaeological work had led to protests across the Muslim world with protesters claiming that Israel was illegally interfering with one of the holiest sites in Islam.  
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to send the mission to Jerusalem, an offer accepted by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who said at the time that Israel had nothing to hide.
Instead of reassuring suspicious Muslims the report is clearly critical of Israeli work on the site.
"The tunneling and excavation work and the large amount of soil extraction shown to our mission along the Wailing Wall give the impression that this is an intervention of great scale and depth and that this intervention goes beyond scientific purpose," the report said.
The Turkish mission was very critical of what it described as a "systematically implemented effort to destroy values associated with cultural assets of the Ayyubid, Mameluke and Ottoman periods."
 Original Source