Palestinian stabs two Israelis, shot dead by civilian

A knife-wielding Palestinian wounded two people in central Israel before he was shot dead by a civilian passerby on Thursday afternoon, in an incident believed to be a "terror attack," police said.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the incident took place in Netanya, a city north of Tel Aviv. A young Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Tulkarem stabbed a 62-year-old woman and a man in his forties, before a civilian shot and killed the assailant, Samri said.

Israel's medical teams said the injuries were evacuated to a hospital in a moderate-to-serious condition.

Samri said the incident was "an apparent terror attack," but the police are still checking the motive for the stabbing.

It was the second Palestinian attack in less than a day. In the morning, a Palestinian broke into a family home in the settlement of Kiryat Arba and killed Hillel Yafa Ariel, a 13-year-old girl, while she was still in her bed.

The assailant was shot and killed by security personnel after he managed to stab one of the guards. Palestinian media identified him as Mahmoud Traira, 17, of the Bani Naim village outside Hebron.

Hebron has been a focal point of much of the nearly nine-month-long wave of attacks. Several hundred Jews live there in a settlement enclave under heavy military guard amidst 200,000 Palestinian, a constant source of frictions.

Kiryat Arba resides just next to Hebron, and it is one of the largest settlements, with a population of about 7,800 people, according to Israel's bureau of statistics.

In the wake of the deadly attack, Israel announced it imposed a closure on Bani Naim, revoked work permits of members of the attacker's extended family, and began the procedures to demolish his family home.

At least 211 Palestinians and 33 Israelis, two U.S. nationals, an Eritrean asylum seeker, and a Sudanese asylum seeker have been killed since the start of the Palestinian unrest in mid-September.

The Israelis were killed in car-ramming, stabbing, and shooting attacks.

Some of the Palestinians died in clashes with Israeli security forces during protests, while others were gunned down for allegedly carrying -- or trying to carry out -- attacks against Israelis.

Israeli leaders accuse the Palestinian National Authority of "inciting" the unrest, while the Palestinians say it is the result of 49 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, home to more than five million Palestinians, where they wish to establish their state. Endit