Israel Says Officer Stabbed, 3 Attackers Shot in Jerusalem

An Israeli policewoman was stabbed and critically wounded in an attack outside Jerusalem's Old City on Friday, Israeli police said, with security forces shooting dead three suspected Palestinian assailants.

"Female border policewoman injured critically in attack at Damascus gate," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld wrote in a statement. "3 Arab terrorists shot by police units that responded at the scene," he added.

Police said the three were killed.

The attack took place as Muslims were marking the end of the third Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, during which tens of thousands of Palestinians from east Jerusalem and the West Bank attended prayers at the nearby al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest site.

According to police, two perpetrators opened fire at a group of police officers who returned fire, and a third stabbed the border policewoman a short distance away before being shot.

Medics said two other people were moderately wounded in the attack, and a further two lightly wounded.

Jerusalem police chief Yoram Halevy identified the three perpetrators as Palestinians from the West Bank.

Israel had eased restrictions on the entrance of Palestinians from the West Bank for Ramadan.

"During Ramadan there are large numbers of (Palestinian) youths who enter without permits, they take advantage of Ramadan to be in Jerusalem," he told media at the scene of the attack.

Palestinian security forces identified one of the suspected attackers as Amer Badawi, a 31-year-old resident of the southern West Bank city Hebron.

Israel police identified the other two as Palestinians aged 18-19 from the Ramallah area.

A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has claimed the lives of 272 Palestinians, 41 Israelis, two Americans, two Jordanians, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.