Two police officers wounded in Jerusalem stabbing; Palestinian attacker shot dead

Two policemen were wounded in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday, before the 19-year-old Palestinian assailant was shot dead, officials said.

According to police, the resident of East Jerusalem came up to the police officers with a knife and attacked one of them in the city’s Muslim Quarter at around 4:30 a.m.

Officers opened fire at the attacker, and he was declared dead at the scene shortly thereafter.

The assailant was later named as Karim Jamal al-Qawasmi from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of at-Tur.

A second officer was hurt in the leg when he was shot by so-called friendly fire as his colleagues opened fire toward the assailant.

The two officers were taken to hospital in good-to-moderate conditions, police said.

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“In the coming period, and until after Ramadan, terrorists and extremists will try to set the area on fire. Police and Border Police will be alert and ready,” Public Security Minister Omer Barlev, who oversees the police, said in response to the attack.

The stabbing comes after two attacks last week in which two Jewish Israeli men in their 40s were separately stabbed in a store in a West Bank town near Jerusalem under near-identical circumstances. The alleged Palestinian assailant was later arrested.