New knife attacks on Israelis in the West Bank left a soldier lightly injured Thursday, while two Palestinian assailants were shot dead by security forces, police and the army said.<\/p>\n
In one incident a Palestinian stabbed and lightly wounded an Israeli border guard near a shrine known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque, in the volatile city of Hebron.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Palestinian attacked and stabbed a soldier. Security forces responded and shot the attacker. The soldier sustained light injuries,\u201d the army said.<\/p>\n
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that the attacker, aged 24, had died.<\/p>\n
In the second incident a Palestinian allegedly tried to stab an Israeli soldier in Hebron, where several knife attacks have taken place in recent days.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoments ago forces thwarted the second attempted stabbing today in Hebron. The Palestinian assailant attempted to stab an IDF soldier at a security post,\u201d read an army statement.<\/p>\n
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the attacker had been shot dead.<\/p>\n
Both incidents were followed by clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli security forces, according to an AFP journalist on the scene.<\/p>\n
A wave of such knife attacks and shootings has left nine Israelis dead since early October.<\/p>\n
The death of the attackers takes the number of Palestinians killed in the recent unrest to 62. Many of those killed have been shot in anti-Israeli protests.<\/p>\n
One Israeli Arab attacker has also been shot dead.<\/p>\n
While a spate of protests and attacks in Jerusalem has eased, tensions have flared in Hebron, where near-daily clashes pit youths against Israeli soldiers enforcing the decades-long occupation of the West Bank.<\/p>\n
Protests in recent days have erupted over Israel’s policy of withholding the bodies of attackers, one of a series of measures to try to dissuade attacks on Jews, which began in early October as tensions over the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem boiled over.<\/p>\n
Palestinians have long feared Israelis seek to change the rules governing the site, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews.<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied seeking to allow Jews to pray at the compound, which they refer to as the Temple Mount.<\/p>\n
Only Muslims are allowed to pray within the compound, while non-Muslims can visit but not pray there.<\/p>\n
Source: Alarabiya<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New knife attacks on Israelis in the West Bank left a soldier lightly injured Thursday, while two Palestinian assailants were shot dead by security forces, police and the army said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c59-islamic-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n