Assailant stabs officer in Jerusalem, is shot dead: Israel police

An assailant stabbed an officer in Jerusalem's Old City Thursday before being shot dead, Israeli police said, with two other officers injured at the scene.

Police said the attacker aroused suspicion and was ordered to stop for inspection before he "stabbed one of the officers in the upper body."

He was then shot by two other officers "and later was pronounced dead," a police statement said.

Two officers sustained minor injuries, apparently from their colleagues' fire, medics said.

The incident in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem happened beside a checkpoint for Muslim worshippers visiting the nearby Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site, which is known by Jews as the Temple Mount.

Medics from Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service said they treated three men at the scene and took them to hospitals in Jerusalem.

Israeli forces sealed off surrounding streets while a forensics team photographed the scene, beside a stall loaded with bread.

Shaare Zedek hospital said they were treating a man suffering a stab wound to the torso in moderate condition, and another man who was lightly wounded by a gunshot to the leg, likely from shots fired by police.

A third man was a police officer lightly wounded after being hit by fragments during the incident, Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital said.

Police told AFP they had yet to determine the identity of the assailant.

Earlier Thursday, a 42-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Israeli border police said officers shot dead a suspect "with a firebomb in his hand" in Beit Duqqu, northwest of Jerusalem.

At least 32 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed across east Jerusalem and the West Bank since the start of October, according to an AFP tally.

The surge in violence prompted a weeks-long lockdown of the West Bank city of Nablus, which the Israeli military said was lifted on Thursday.

The closure imposed on October 11 had restricted travel in and out of the city for around 200,000 Palestinians, disrupting daily life, the local economy and access to medical care and education.