Israeli police kill Palestinian knifeman for injuring 3

Israeli police said they shot and killed a Palestinian knifeman after he stabbed and wounded two civilians and a policeman in East Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday afternoon.

Israel's MDA emergency medical service said two 18-year-old men and a paramilitary police officer sustained light-to-moderate injuries and needed hospital care.

The incident took place in the Old City's street market, which Israel seized along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War and which the Palestinians seek for a state.

According to police spokeswoman Luba Samri, the assailant is a resident of the West Bank. "He identified two Israelis and followed them before he stormed them, stabbing them, apparently with a knife," said Samri.

A police force that was called to the site started a manhunt in the narrow streets of the Old City, Samri said, adding that the suspect found a hide in an entrance of a building.

Samri said the policemen that found him "confronted the knife-wielding (suspect) before he hit one of the police and was neutralized."

The attack was part of a spate of violence that broke out in September 2015 but has abated in recent months.

It also came three days after the police shot and killed a young Palestinian woman who allegedly tried to stab them in East Jerusalem's Old City.

Since the beginning of the unrest, Palestinians have killed 41 Israelis and two U.S. nationals, while Israeli forces and civilians killed at least 241 Palestinians, a Jordanian, and two African asylum seekers, most of them alleged attackers, according to Israel.

Israel accuses the Palestinian National Authority of "inciting" the unrest. The Palestinians say it is the result of 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, home to more than 5 million Palestinians.