Three Israelis killed in Tel Aviv and West Bank attacks...Palestinians want no Jews anywhere.

Three Israelis killed in Tel Aviv and West Bank attacks

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThe attack in Tel Aviv occurred as people worshipped at a shop serving as a synagogue

At least three Israelis have been killed in two attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank, police say.

In the first attack, two Israelis were stabbed to death by a Palestinian man at the entrance of a shop that serves as a synagogue in the city of Tel Aviv.

Hours later, a shooting and vehicle attack near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc left another person dead. 

A wave of violence over the past two months has claimed the lives of 15 Israelis and dozens of Palestinians. 

Many of the Palestinian fatalities were attackers in near-daily stabbings of Israelis, shot by their victims or security forces. Others have been killed in clashes with troops in the West Bank or in cross-border violence in Gaza.

Search for accomplices

Thursday's first attack took place in a busy commercial building on Ben Tzvi road in southern Tel Aviv.

Witness Shimon Vaknin told the Jerusalem Post newspaper that the afternoon prayer service had just begun at the shop when a man covered in blood fell on a number of worshippers.

Image copyrightIsraeli Prime Minister's Office

Image captionSecurity officials said the Tel Aviv attacker was a 36-year-old man from the West Bank

The other worshippers then pushed the attacker outside the shop and barricaded the door shut, he said.

One of the victims, a man in his 20s, was declared dead at the scene by the Magen David Adom ambulance service. The second was rushed to Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival.

The assailant, who security officials said was a 36-year-old man from the West Bank village of Dura, was reportedly lightly wounded and is in custody.

Police said they believed he had acted alone, but were nevertheless searching for possible accomplices.

The militant Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas posted a Tweet praising "the heroic attack in Tel Aviv", adding: "We ask the fighters to keep doing so."

Image copyrightReuters

Image captionIn the West Bank, attackers opened fire at a junction and then crashed a car into pedestrians

Hours later, one person was killed and five others were wounded by attackers who opened fire at a busy junction and rammed a car into a group of pedestrians near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, Israeli police said. 

Two attackers were shot, and security forces were searching for a third, they added.

Israeli media reported that two Jews - an 18-year-old American tourist and a 50-year-old Israeli - and a Palestinian were killed in the attack.

The Tel Aviv attack was the first by a Palestinian on Israelis since Friday, when a rabbi and his son were shot dead south of the West Bank city of Hebron, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

The last attack in central Israel, it reports, was two-and-a-half weeks ago, when four people were stabbed and wounded in Rishon Lezion and Netanya.

The surge in violence began in September when tensions at a flashpoint holy site in Jerusalem revered by Jews and Muslims boiled over, amid rumours that Israel planned to relax long-standing rules to strengthen Jewish rights at the complex. Israel has repeatedly denied such claims.