Two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers in an attack on a military post in the West Bank today before troops shot them dead, the army said.
In northern Israel, paramilitary border police shot and killed a man who tried to stab one of them after being stopped for an identity check, police said. A senior officer said the attacker was apparently a Palestinian from the West Bank.
The latest bloodshed followed Israel's killing a day earlier of five Palestinians, including an elderly woman crushed in a house demolition and two medical workers who Palestinian witnesses said were hit in a hospital by gunfire.
The violence surged as war loomed in the Gulf and US Secretary of State Colin Powell tried in the UN Security Council to indict Iraq over alleged weapons of mass destruction he said it was hiding from UN inspectors.
Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that Powell's presentation had provided overwhelming evidence that Iraq was developing banned weapons.
Fearing that Iraq might fire missiles at Israel as it did in the 1991 Gulf War, Israeli military and civil defence forces have stepped up preparations to meet the possible threat.
In Nablus in the West Bank, two Palestinian gunmen unsuccessfully tried to infiltrate an army outpost in the heart of the city under Israeli occupation and then fired at it from the outside, the army said.
An Israeli officer, a soldier and the two gunmen were killed in the ensuing battle, it said.