Israeli officer stabbed, three attackers shot in Jerusalem: police

JERUSALEM: An Israeli policewoman was stabbed and critically wounded in an attack outside Jerusalem´s Old City on Friday, police said, with security forces shooting dead three suspected Palestinian assailants.

"Female border policewoman injured critically in attack at Damascus gate," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld wrote in a statement. "3 Arab terrorists shot by police units that responded at the scene."

Police said the three were dead.

The attack took place as Muslims were marking the end of the third Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, during which tens of thousands of Palestinians from east Jerusalem and the West Bank attended prayers at the nearby Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam´s third-holiest site.

According to police, two perpetrators opened fire at a group of police officers who returned fire, and a third stabbed the border policewoman a short distance away before being shot.

Medics said two other people were moderately wounded in the attack, and a further two lightly wounded.

A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has claimed the lives of 272 Palestinians, 41 Israelis, two Americans, two Jordanians, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.