Israeli forces kill two alleged attackers

Police shoot a Palestinian at Damascus Gate and Israeli soldiers kill a Palestinian at West Bank settlement near Hebron.

Israeli Border Police surround the body of a man who allegedly attacked officers with a knife at Damascus Gate, which leads to the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel, on September 16, 2016. The man was a Jordanian resident with a Jordanian passport, but police are still investigating if he was also Palestinian or of Palestinian descent. Atef Safadi / EPAShow less

JERUSALEM // Police shot and killed a man alleged to have charged at officers and tried to stab them with a knife at a main entrance to Jerusalem’s walled Old City on Friday.

He was identified as a resident of Jordan although it was not clear whether he was a Jordanian national.

Police said the assailant “was running towards police officers with a knife in his hand and was shot and killed” near the heavily patrolled Damascus Gate. No police were hurt. The assailant was said to have had another knife with him.

In another incident on Friday, the Israeli army stopped a car that rammed a bus stop at a junction near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, outside the town of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Soldiers opened fire on the two people in the vehicle – both Palestinians – killing one and seriously wounding the other.

Earlier in the day, the Palestinian health ministry announced that a Palestinian who was shot during an Israeli army raid on Thursday near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, had died of his wounds. According to the military he was shot as he fled arrest.

At least 212 Palestinians have died in violent incidents since October in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Authorities said 141 of them were assailants, while others were killed during clashes and protests.

Palestinians, many of them acting alone and with rudimentary weapons, have killed at least 33 Israelis and two visiting Americans in attacks that have waned in recent months.

Palestinian leaders said assailants acted out of desperation over the collapse of peace talks in 2014 and Israeli settlement expansion in Israeli-occupied territory Palestinians seek for an independent state.

Israel claims the attacks are stoked by anti-Israeli incitement among Palestinian officials and on social networks.

* Reuters