JERUSALEM (AFP) - A car-ramming attack wounded several people including six police officers in the flashpoint Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday (May 16), police said, adding that the attacker was shot.

An assailant carried out a "vehicle-ramming attack" that injured two officers moderately and four lightly, before being "shot by officers", police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said without giving details on the attacker's condition.

Sheikh Jarrah has seen weeks of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces, who have cracked down hard on protests against the planned expulsion of several Palestinian families from their homes there.

Early this year, the Jerusalem district court ruled in favour of Jewish settlers who laid claim to land with homes now housing around 30 Palestinians from four families.

The Jewish plaintiffs claimed their own families had owned the land which they lost during the war that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948.

Israel seized east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it.

Palestinians say they have no legal avenue to claim back their properties inside what is now Israel.

A Supreme Court hearing on the residents' appeal has been postponed due to a sharp uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence.