Four Palestinians killed by gunfire after attempted knife attacks

Four Palestinians were shot dead and a fifth wounded in attacks on Israelis in East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Saturday, as violence that has fuelled concerns of an uprising showed no let-up.

The violence that has raged for more than two weeks prompted a "very concerned" US President Barack Obama to call for calm.

Including alleged assailants, 41 Palestinians have been killed since the violence erupted on 1 October.

The mounting death toll has prompted fears of a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising, like those of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, when thousands were killed in near-daily violence.

Three of Saturday's attacks took place in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron, where some 500 Jewish settlers live in a heavily guarded enclave in the city centre surrounded by nearly 200,000 Palestinians.

A fourth was at a checkpoint in a Jewish settlement neighbourhood of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, and a fifth at another checkpoint.

In the first Hebron incident, a Palestinian tried to stab a settler before his intended victim, who was unharmed, shot him dead, the army said.

Palestinian security sources identified the assailant as 18-year-old Fadel al-Kawatsmi.

Video circulated by Palestinian activists showed a young man wearing a kippa brandishing a pistol as shots rang out before Israeli soldiers moved in to pull him away from a body lying on the ground.

In the second attack, a Palestinian girl attempted to stab a female Israeli soldier outside a border guard base before being shot dead by her would-be victim, Israeli police said.

The soldier suffered minor injuries to her hand, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Palestinian media said her assailant was aged 16.

And a Palestinian was shot after stabbing and moderately wounding a soldier, the army reported, without saying whether the attacker was killed.

Troops also opened fire at stone-throwing Palestinian youths in several sectors of Hebron, wounding 11 with rubber bullets and one with a live round, Palestinian medics said.

In east Jerusalem, a Palestinian tried to stab a soldier at a checkpoint in East Talpiot but was shot dead by other soldiers.

Police said the assailant was a 16-year-old from nearby Jabel Mukaber, the same neighbourhood that was home to three Palestinians who carried out attacks earlier this week.

And a border guard killed a 24-year-old Palestinian who tried to knife him at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank, police said.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, army gunfire on the border wounded at least four civilians, according to the enclave's health minister Ashraf al-Qudra.

Israeli security forces have deployed massively in Jerusalem to try to halt the attacks and, on Wednesday, began setting up checkpoints in parts of east Jerusalem, including Jabel Mukaber. 

But that has failed to stop the violence.

Late Saturday, some 2,000 pro-peace demonstrators answered a call by Israeli leftist groups and gathered in the centre of Jerusalem under the banner "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies", an AFP reporter at the scene saw.