Palestinian killed, two Israelis wounded north of Hebron

A Palestinian driver ran over and injured an Israeli border policeman near the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday and was then killed by Israeli forces, police said.

"A border policeman was taken to hospital seriously wounded and is in a life-threatening condition," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

"Policemen who were standing nearby opened fire at the terrorist and he was neutralised," she added. "He was declared dead at the scene."

Palestinian security officials identified him as Ibrahim Skafi, 22, from Hebron.

They said that following the incident the army closed off the surrounding area and collected video data from the security cameras of shops and buildings.

Witnesses reported that the Israeli forces prevented a Palestinian ambulance from reaching the scene.

The incident, at Halhul junction on the edge of the flashpoint city, followed a two-day lull in violence that has claimed the lives of nine Israelis, 72 Palestinians - around half of them alleged attackers - since the start of October.

The violence was originally focused in and around Jerusalem but the epicentre later moved to Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank. 

On Monday, four Israelis were wounded in two stabbing incidents in Israel. One of the two Palestinian attackers was a teenager from Hebron, police said.

The same day a Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank and was shot dead.

In the past two weeks, around 20 young Palestinians have been shot by Israeli forces in and around Hebron. The army has accused them of trying to stab Israeli security forces or Jewish settlers.

Hebron, the largest in the West Bank, is home to a shrine known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. It has 200,000 Palestinian residents. But the presence of around 500 Jewish settlers, protected by an army-patrolled buffer zone, is a constant source of tension.