Palestinian shot dead after stabbing two people in Israeli town

A Palestinian from the occupied West Bank stabbed a man and woman on Thursday in the Israeli town of Netanya before being shot dead by a passing civilian, police said.

One of the victims suffered serious wounds and the other was moderately hurt, police said in a statement, describing the attack as "a terror incident".

"A woman and a man were stabbed... by a resident of the Tulkarem district," it said referring to a Palestinian town about 16km from Netanya.

The nationality of the two stabbing victims is still unknown.

The attack was the second in a few hours, coming after a Palestinian stabbed to death a 13-year-old Israeli girl as she slept in her home in a Jewish settlement in the southern West Bank.

The army said the young Palestinian killed the girl in her bed after breaking into her home in the Kiryat Arba settlement outside the flashpoint city of Hebron.

Settlement security guards shot dead the attacker, identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Mohammed Nasser Tarayra, 19, from the village of Bani Naim, just outside the city.

Violence since October has killed at least 212 Palestinians, 33 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese.

Most of the Palestinians were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were killed in clashes with security forces or by Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.