JERUSALEM: Israeli police fatally shot a woman who tried to stab officers in Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday, police said.

According to a police statement, the attacker attempted to stab police in one of the streets leading to the Al-Aqsa mosque, where an AFP journalist heard gunshots and saw the body of a woman on the ground, later draped in a survival blanket.

Israeli police “opened fire” at the assailant and “medical forces who arrived at the scene determined her death,” police said, adding that the attempted attack did not result in any casualties.

The 30-year-old assailant, who was not immediately identified, was leaving the Al-Aqsa compound, Islam’s third holiest site, when she approached officers, the police said.

Israeli security forces are stationed at each entrance to the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

The mosque compound lies in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the city which Israel occupied in 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognized by the international community.

In May, days of clashes at the site between Palestinians and Israeli forces were the prelude to 11 days of conflict in Gaza between Israel and the territory’s Islamist rulers Hamas, the heaviest fighting between the two sides in years.

Five Palestinians were killed on Sunday after an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank sparked gunbattles with Hamas militants, officials said.

AFP