Clashes in Palestine wound 40

A Palestinian woman attempted to ram a car into Israeli border guards in a town in the occupied West Bank on Friday before being shot dead, Israeli police said.

"An attempted attack to ram a car into border guards deployed in the village of Silwad [northwest of Ramallah] failed. The border guards spotted the terrorist ... fired on her and killed her," a police spokesman said in a statement.

The attempted car ramming came shortly after a Palestinian, Hani Wahdan, 22, was killed in clashes with Israeli forces near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, said a spokesman for the Palestinian health ministry of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

Palestinian security sources identified the woman as Mahdiyah Hammad, 38, originally from Silwad.

The ministry said Wahdan was killed as he was throwing stones near the Nahal Oz crossing point.

Around 40 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes that took place at several points along the barrier that separates Israel from the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokeswoman reported that "hundreds of Palestinians" took part in the clashes.

The Palestinians were "attempting to damage the security fence by throwing rocks and hurling burning tyres at it. Forces on the site responded to the immediate danger of infiltration [into Israel] asking them to halt and firing warning shots," the spokeswoman said. 

"But because of the ongoing violence and the threat to nearby [Israeli] communities they fired towards the main instigators," she said.

A wave of violence beginning in October has claimed the lives of 129 Palestinians, 19 Israelis, an American and an Eritrean.

Many of the Palestinians killed have been attackers while others have been shot dead by Israeli security forces during clashes.

A number of them have attempted attacks with kitchen knives in what some analysts have described as virtual suicide missions.

Palestinians have grown frustrated with Israel's occupation, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership.