Three dead as West Bank violence escalates

Israeli security forces on Thursday raided a West Bank city after three fatal attacks rocked the Jewish state in a week, with two Palestinians shot dead and a third killed after launching a stabbing attack on a bus.

The violence comes after a Palestinian armed with an M-16 assault rifle killed two Israeli civilians, two Ukranian nationals and an Israeli-Arab policeman in the streets of Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv, on Tuesday night.

The shooting took to 11 the number of people slain in attacks carried out since March 22 by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, including two attacks linked to the Islamic State group.

The latest bloodshed erupted in the West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday morning when Israeli soldiers mounting an operation to arrest suspects linked to the Bnei Brak attack returned fire after being shot at, the army said.

"Palestinian assailants fired toward the troops, who returned fire," a statement from the military said.

The Palestinian health ministry said "the Israeli occupation forces" killed two Palestinians, Sanad Abu Attia, 17, and Yazid Al-Saadi, 23. Another 15 people were wounded, it said.

Throngs of people accompanied the bodies of Abu Attia and Al-Saadi through Jenin to pay their last respects, and masked men in black fired weapons into the air.

Israel said forces arrested a total of 31 people across the West Bank overnight, including three suspects in the village of Yabad, which was home to the attacker in Tuesday's fatal shooting in Bnei Brak. An Israeli sniper was wounded during the raid, the army said.

Also Thursday, a Palestinian man stabbed an Israeli civilian with a screwdriver on a bus south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the police said, before "a civilian on the bus shot the terrorist dead," according to the army.

Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem said it treated a man aged about 30 for stab wounds to his torso, and that he was in "serious but stable" condition.

The Palestinian health ministry identified the alleged assailant as Nidal Jumaa Jafara, 30.

The Gaza Strip-based secretary general of Islamic Jihad, Ziad Al-Nakhala, announced the group's armed wing would step up activities "in light of the storming of Jenin camp by the Zionist enemy army".

Osama Al-Hroub, an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin, called the killing of the two young Palestinian men there a "crime" aimed at "covering up a series of disappointments and the occupation's security failure, which failed to prevent the attacks deep inside" Israel.

The violence has cast a pall ahead of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend.

A senior Palestinian intelligence official told AFP on Thursday that the Palestinian security services were "raising" security readiness, both in terms of Palestinian attacks inside Israel and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers.

Later Thursday, Israelis flocked to the Nazareth funeral of Amir Khoury, 32, the Arab Christian policeman who died while confronting the Bnei Brak gunman.

Last year, clashes in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem escalated into 11 days of bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday morning, far-right Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir taunted Hamas as he walked through the compound, which Jews revere as the site of two ancient temples.

"All night Hamas threatened me and said that I was in the line of fire and told me not to come here," he said. "I say to the Hamas spokesman shut up".

The violence has undercut regional efforts to defuse the situation.

Jordan's King Abdullah II paid a rare visit to Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday, where he met with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas. He hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Defence Minister Benny Gantz in Amman later during the week and condemned "violence in all its forms".

Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994 and the Hashemite Kingdom serves as custodian of holy places in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognised by most of the international community.

Palestinians seek to end Israeli control and build a state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, also captured in 1967.

Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians have been frozen for years.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is opposed to a Palestinian state, and instead has pursued a policy of economic easements for Palestinians.

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