A woman was stabbed to death and three other Israelis, including a soldier, were injured in two separate knife attacks on Monday, police said, in widening violence stoked by tensions over a Jerusalem holy site.
The first incident, in which a Palestinian stabbed and critically wounded the soldier at a Tel Aviv train station, brought bloodshed to the Israeli commercial capital that has largely been spared since a Palestinian revolt ended in 2005.
Police said they had identified the suspected assailant, who was arrested, as a resident of the Palestinian town of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
A police spokesman said that hours later, a Palestinian stormed out of a car to stab three people outside the Jewish settlement of Alon Shvut in the West Bank, killing the woman. The attacker was shot and wounded by a guard.
Israeli-Palestinian tensions have festered over access to a Jerusalem compound housing Islam’s third holiest site and where biblical Jewish temples once stood.
Stone-throwing protests have also erupted in several Arab towns in Israel since Saturday, when police killed an Arab youth who assaulted them.
There was no immediate Palestinian comment after the attacks in Tel Aviv and the West Bank.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking in parliament after the Tel Aviv assault said "terror ... is being directed at all parts of the country for a simple reason: the terrorists, the inciters, want to drive us from everywhere."
“As far as they are concerned, we should not be in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or anywhere. I can promise you one thing - they will not succeed. We will continue to fight terror ... and we will defeat it together,” he said.
Five days ago, a Palestinian rammed his car into pedestrians in central Jerusalem, the second such incident of its kind in as many weeks, killing two Israelis. Police shot the driver dead.
Reuters