Two wounded in Jerusalem after Gaza and West Bank violence
An Israeli policeman and a Jewish teenager were wounded Monday in two separate stabbing attacks carried out by Palestinian boys in annexed east Jerusalem, police said, amid a spike in violence.
Earlier on Monday, Israel struck a Hamas base in Gaza after rocket fire from the enclave, and a Palestinian was killed as the army detained alleged attackers in the occupied West Bank.
On Monday afternoon, while searching a bus at the entrance to east Jerusalem's Shuafat refugee camp, a policeman was stabbed and left in a "serious condition", said officers, who arrested a 13-year-old Palestinian from the camp.
Police said the officer suffered stab wounds as well as being shot, after a civilian opened fire intending to hit the attacker but missed.
Earlier, police arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian also from Shuafat, who allegedly stabbed a 17-year-old in Jerusalem's Old City.
Israel's Magen David Adom emergency response service said the 17-year-old was mildly wounded and transferred to hospital.
Since the start of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 47 Palestinian adults and children, including militants and civilians.
Nine Israeli civilians, including three children, and one Ukrainian civilian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official sources from both sides.
- 'Extensive damage' -
Separately, in Israeli-blockaded Gaza, the army said it struck "an underground complex containing raw materials used for the manufacturing of rockets" belonging to Hamas, which rules the enclave.
The military said the strikes were "a response" to a rocket fired on Saturday from the coastal territory towards Israel.
A spokesman for Hamas' interior ministry in Gaza said the strikes caused "extensive damage to four houses, a wedding hall and a gas station", but no casualties were reported.
An AFP journalist saw Palestinians using a digger to collect rubble beside a collapsed multi-storey building, on the seafront of Gaza City.
Senior Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said that further strikes would prompt a military response, warning that the group's rockets would reach "ground targets in Tel Aviv and beyond".
In the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said Amir Ihab Bustami, 21, was killed in a pre-dawn Israeli raid in Nablus, the scene of repeated clashes over the past year.
The army said Israeli forces apprehended two men, Abdul Kamel Jouri and Osama Taweel, who allegedly shot dead soldier Ido Baruch in October.
The military announced it detained three other suspects, after Israel spent months gathering intelligence to find "where the assailants were hiding".
"Forces arrived at the hideout apartment and an exchange of fire was instigated between the forces and the wanted suspects," it added.
- Settlement approvals -
In a move likely to further inflame tensions, Israel's security cabinet late Sunday announced it would legalise nine West Bank Jewish settlements in response to fatal Palestinian attacks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline government also announced a beefed-up security presence in east Jerusalem.
A security cabinet statement said many of the newly authorised West Bank settler communities had existed for years, and others for decades, but had not previously been recognised as legitimate by Israel's government.
Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called for the international community to "punish" Israel over the move.
Jordan's foreign minister said it will fuel violence, with spokesman Sinan Majali warning "everyone will pay the price".
In Sunday's security cabinet meeting, officials also said they intended to announce a new round of settler housing construction in the West Bank.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking during a trip to the region last month, warned against settlement expansion.
Some 475,000 Jewish settlers now live in the Palestinian territory, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.
Most of that population resides in settlements that Israel has unilaterally authorised, but some live in communities that have not been given government authorisation.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
