Dozens of demonstrators were wounded Monday when Bedouin clashed with Egyptian police in the Sinai Peninsula to protest a government order to demolish their houses along the Gaza Strip's porous border.

Egyptian media have been reporting a government plan to evict the Bedouins from a 150 meter strip of land along the border to prevent traffickers from digging tunnels used to smuggle weapons and people into Gaza.

About 3000 protesters shouted anti-government slogans and demanded that authorities rescind the order. "We will not leave our land, we will make it our graves," the Bedouins chanted.

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Security officials said at least one police officer was wounded when protesters lobbed rocks at a police force trying to disperse them in downtown Rafah, the main town on the border.

Police initially said it fired tear gas and used water cannons to evict demonstrators from the streets.

A reporter at the scene then saw police firing live ammunition in the air and rubber bullets at the protesters.

Dozens of demonstrators, possibly as many as 50, were wounded, the reporter said.

The protest came a day after a U.S. delegation toured the area to probe reports of weapons smuggling.

Aboul Hassan el-Sinawi, a Bedouin from the Al-Rumelat tribe in Rafah, said he was protesting because local government officials ordered him and his family to abandon their house, which he said lies some two kilometers from the border.

"This is ridiculous, how can a two-kilometer long tunnel be built in the desert," el-Sinawi said.

Protesters said authorities warned those who refused eviction that their homes would be demolished. They said the government is offering financial compensation for their houses, but not for trees and farmlands.

Egypt is under pressure from the United States and Israel to stop the flow of weapons into Gaza ever since Hamas seized control of the tiny coastal territory in June.

Two congressional delegations have inspected the border zone this month to probe reports about the tunnels along the 14-kilometer border.

Egyptian authorities are considering a plan to demolish all homes next to the borders to prevent them from being used to hide tunnels.