Daily Times

A knife-wielding assailant stabbed and wounded two Israeli officers in Jerusalem’s annexed Old City on Monday before being shot by forces at the site, Israeli police said. “A terrorist arrived at the Cotton Merchant’s Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City from the Temple Mount armed with a knife and stabbed two officers,” a police statement said. “In response, the officers fired at him and he was neutralised.” A spokesman for Jerusalem police told AFP that the assailant, not immediately identified, was not killed by the gunfire.

Medics said they had taken two moderately wounded men from the scene to hospitals in Jerusalem. On Sunday, a 19-year-old Palestinian was shot dead after he stabbed and wounded an officer also in the Old City. The Old City lies in the Israeli-annexed eastern part of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state. Another Palestinian was killed on Sunday in the occupied West Bank, after he attacked Israeli troops with Molotov cocktails, the army said. Lone-wolf knife attacks targeting Israeli security forces are common in the Old City and the West Bank. The Monday attacker had come from Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, where violence exploded last May after Israeli police stormed the compound in response to worshippers throwing rocks and explosives.