Palestinian stabs Israeli officer, shot: police

A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli policeman with a screwdriver in annexed east Jerusalem's Old City before being shot and seriously wounded today, police said.

"(The attacker) produced a screwdriver and stabbed a policeman in the head, lightly injuring him," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

"Security forces neutralised the terrorist."

The incident happened in the heart of the Old City, a major draw for foreign tourists and pilgrims but the site of several attacks over the past year.

A later statement said the attacker had been taken to a nearby hospital with serious injuries.

Samri said he was 21 years old and from the Hebron area in the south of the occupied West Bank.
 

A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted last year, but the violence has greatly subsided in recent months.

Since October 2015, 242 Palestinians, 36 Israelis, two Americans, a Jordanian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese have been killed, according to an AFP count.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead during protests or clashes, while some died in Israeli air strikes on Gaza.