Israel: Knife intifada gathering bombs

Israel has been shaken by a bloody attack by Palestinians at the gates of Jerusalem’s Old City.

An Israeli medic inspects the body of a Palestinian at the scene of a shooting attack near the Damascus gate, Jerusalem's Old City, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016. Three Palestinians carrying automatic weapons, explosive devices and knives shot and stabbed two Israeli security officers in Jerusalem on Wednesday, wounding both before police shot and killed the attackers, police said. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Israel has been shaken by a bloody attack by Palestinians at the gates of Jerusalem’s Old City, killing four people including an Israeli policewoman.

The Palestinian men were ­carrying automatic weapons and a pipe bomb, raising concern that they had been intent on causing mass casualties before a “hand to hand” fight broke out with ­security forces.

Their ID was being checked at the Damascus Gate that leads on to the walled city’s Muslim ­quarter when one of the men ­produced a weapon and turned on two policewomen, fatally wounding 19-year-old Hadar Cohen. Her companion was seriously wounded. One of the ­policewomen was stabbed in the neck, while the other was shot.

The Palestinians were cut down and killed by return gunfire.

The attack sounded alarm bells as the spate of Palestinian ­violence that erupted last Oct­ober in Jerusalem seemed to have been quelled by an increased ­security on the streets.

It came as a purported smuggling tunnel collapsed while being pushed towards the Egyptian border from Gaza, the third such incident in a week, raising concern that militants from the ruling Hamas faction are intensifying a smuggling effort.

The so-called knife intifada in Israel, reflecting deepening Palestinian anger over conditions on the occupied territories and in East Jerusalem as well as with the stalled the peace process, has started to give way to incidents ­involving firearms and, worryingly, bombs. Two people died and two were injured when a Palestinian gunmen opened fire in a Tel Aviv restaurant on January 1, and on Sunday, a Palestinian Authority police officer was shot dead after loosing off shots at Israeli soldiers near Ramallah.

Muhammad Halabiya, 17, died on Saturday when a pipe bomb detonated prematurely in his hands as he ­approached an Israeli post at Abu Dis near Jerusalem.

Images released by the Israel police showed that two of the automatic weapons taken from the Damascus Gate attackers yesterday resembled homemade “Karl Gustav” guns often seized in Palestinian sectors. Hamas spokesman Hussar Badran hailed the men as heroes, playing up they had travelled from the West Bank city of Jenin despite the crackdown.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said police had entered into deadly “hand to hand” combat to stop what could have been a massacre in the Old City.

The latest tunnel collapse in Gaza happened beneath the Zeitoun neighbourhood near the Egyptian border. Seven Hamas tunnellers died in a fall-in last week, and two others perished in a collapse near Khan Younis on Tuesday. Israel has accused Hamas of using international aid to rebuild its network of tunnels — to infiltrate fighters into southern Israel and smuggle arms from Egypt — that were destroyed ­during Israel’s 2014 military ­incursion into Gaza.