Israeli police kill Palestinian assailant in Jerusalem: police, state media

Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli security forces shot dead a Palestinian man in annexed east Jerusalem on Saturday after he stabbed an Israeli civilian and tried to attack police, Israeli police and Palestinian medics said.

The assailant used a knife to stab a man near the city's Damascus Gate and then "attempted to stab a border police officer," police said in a statement.

"Police neutralised the stabber," it added.

A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent said police killed the Palestinian assailant.

Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service said the stabbing victim was a 20-year-old religious Jewish man who was taken to hospital in "moderate to severe condition."

The assailant was not immediately identified. Israeli public radio said he was a 25-year-old from the northern West Bank town of Salfit.

Footage filmed by a bystander near the Damascus Gate and widely shared on social media showed a man in jeans lying prone on a sidewalk as police fired shots at him.

The official Palestinian state news agency Wafa said the man was killed "when Israeli police officers opened fire on him at point blank range."

Mohammed Hamadeh, Jerusalem spokesman for Islamist group Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip, decried the "deliberate shooting of a wounded young man lying on the ground".

After the shooting, police fired tear gas near the Damascus Gate to disperse Palestinians gathered there.

The incident came after a Hamas-affiliated gunman fatally shot a Jewish tour guide in Jerusalem's Old City before police killed him last month.

Days before that, security forces shot dead a 16-year-old assailant in the Old City who they said stabbed two police officers.

The Old City is located in east Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and which Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.