Clashes rock West Bank as Palestinian attacker killed in Israel

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Fresh clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters rocked the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday as a Palestinian was killed after stabbing an Israeli officer, adding to a surging death toll.

Israeli forces launched a fourth day of military operations around Jenin after an assailant from the flashpoint district last week shot and killed three people in a Tel Aviv bar in the latest of a spate of attacks that have stunned Israel.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — who warned in response that there would "not be limits for this war" — vowed during a visit to the Tel Aviv shooting scene overnight: "We will not let our enemy stop our lives."

In Tuesday's battles, which raged for a fourth day, Israeli soldiers "fired live bullets, stun grenades and tear gas", the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said.

The Israeli forces said its soldiers fired "live ammunition towards suspects who hurled explosive devices at them as well as towards armed suspects in the area", and arrested 20 Palestinians.

A makeshift barricade of car tyres blocked a road to the Jenin refugee camp, where a wall poster hailed the Tel Aviv shooter, Raad Hazem, 28, who was killed after a massive all-night manhunt last Friday.

The latest violence to rock Israel came in the Mediterranean port city of Ashkelon, where Israeli forces said an officer was checking a Palestinian man in his 40s who then "pulled out a knife and attacked the officer".

The officer "fired and neutralised the suspect, whose death was declared on site", Israeli  froces said, adding that the officer was hospitalised with light wounds from a kitchen knife.

Israeli forces said the man was from Hebron — a powder keg where around 1,000 Jewish settlers live under heavy military protection among 200,000 Palestinians.

Palestinian youth have also confronted elsewhere with Israeli forces, including in Ramallah, where they threw rocks and were met with tear gas.

The rise in violence comes during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and days before the Jewish festival of Passover and Christian Easter.