Summary 20-year-old suspected assailant, named by Palestinian media as Assad al-Salayma died of his injuries
HEBRON (AFP) - Israeli security forces on Saturday shot dead a Palestinian man who stabbed an officer in the West Bank hours after a knife-wielding teenager was killed at an east Jerusalem checkpoint.
The two incidents were the latest in a spate of apparent lone wolf attacks by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians and security personnel since last October.
They were followed by a suspected deliberate hit-and-run in east Jerusalem wounding three police officers, and a Molotov cocktail thrown at an Israeli bus in the West Bank.
Earlier Saturday a border police officer shot dead a Palestinian man who was stabbing a colleague at a checkpoint near the Tomb of Patriarchs, or Ibrahimi Mosque as it is known to Muslims, in the southern West Bank city Hebron, police said.
Spokeswoman Luba Samri said the policeman was in moderate condition with stab wounds to the head and chest.
The 20-year-old suspected assailant, named by Palestinian media as Assad al-Salayma, died of his injuries en route to hospital in Jerusalem.
Just before midnight on Friday, Israeli police shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian who tried to stab their colleagues at a checkpoint in annexed Arab east Jerusalem, Samri said.
The youth from the Al-Tur neighbourhood, identified by Palestinian activists as Ali al-Ghannam, managed to get past one checkpoint but was brought down at a second near Al-Zaim after charging it armed with a cleaver.
There were no police casualties.
Al-Zaim checkpoint, where the suspect was shot dead shortly before midnight (2100 GMT Friday), lies on the main highway east from Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem clashes
Clashes broke out in Ghannam s home neighbourhood on Saturday as young Palestinians in Al-Tur protested against his killing.
Dozens of protesters threw stones and rolled burning tyres at Israeli security forces, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, an AFP correspondent reported.
More than 25 Palestinians were taken for medical treatment, the correspondent said.
Samri said one officer had suffered minor injuries from a stone to the face and police had used "riot dispersal means" to quell the protest.
She told AFP no arrests were made.
In fresh incidents late Saturday night, an unidentified assailant rammed a car into a group of police officers in Al-Tur, moderately wounding a women and lightly wounding two men, Samri said.
The car was found without its driver, who fled the scene.
And on the West Bank highway 443, which connects Tel Aviv with Jerusalem, a bus went up in flames, with the army saying the fire was the result of a Molotov cocktail. The army said only the driver was on the bus at the time and he was unhurt.
Palestinians in east Jerusalem declared a general strike on Saturday.
A Palestinian information centre said that police were refusing to release Ghannam s body for burial unless the family agreed to restrictions on the number of mourners.
The boy s father rejected the Israeli terms, the Silwan information centre said on its Facebook page.
Israel routinely places restrictions on the funerals of Palestinians killed in suspected political violence in a bid to prevent them becoming the focus of protests.
There was no immediate claim of involvement by any Palestinian militant group in Ghannam s actions and he had no known affiliations.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the killing of the "youth in Hebron", blaming Israel of a deliberately "leading the region to a cycle of violence."
The PA said Israel s "crimes" in Hebron and east Jerusalem Saturday "will not go without punishment," noting in a statement it had reached out to "international bodies" to halt the "Israeli escalation."
Tensions have been running high in and around Jerusalem since the killings of Israeli and Palestinian captives in tit-for-tat kidnappings by Palestinian militants and Jewish extremists last summer.
Earlier this month, an Israeli man was killed and a woman seriously hurt when a Palestinian driver deliberately rammed his car into a bus stop.
In March, five Israelis were injured when a Palestinian drove into a group of pedestrians before getting out of his car to try to stab people.
In November, an Israeli border policeman was killed and several people wounded when a Palestinian drove his vehicle into passengers waiting at a tram stop.
A three-month-old Israeli-American was among two people killed in a similar attack last October.
