Five dead in Israel and West Bank attacks

A pair of attacks by Palestinians — one in Tel Aviv and another in the occupied West Bank — killed five people, including an 18-year-old American citizen, on Thursday, intensifying a two-month-long wave of violence.

A knife-wielding Palestinian man fatally stabbed two Israeli men in a southern Tel Aviv office building before being apprehended, police and witnesses said. Later Thursday, authorities said three people, among them the U.S. citizen, were killed and six wounded in a shooting and vehicle attack in the West Bank. 

Police said the stabbing took place in a shop on the second floor of an office building where a group of Israelis had gathered to hold afternoon prayers.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said one of the dead was in his 20s. Details about the second victim's identity were not immediately known, but he died of his wounds in the hospital, she said. A third Israeli was wounded.

Samri said the attacker was apprehended by civilians and identified him as Raed Khalil bin Mahmoud, a 36-year-old Palestinian father of five from the West Bank village of Dura, near Hebron.

It was not immediately clear what he was doing in Tel Aviv.

In the West Bank attack, police said a Palestinian driver sprayed a line of cars stuck in traffic with bullets, killing the American as well as an Israeli and a Palestinian. The Israeli military said the motorist then rammed his vehicle into a group of pedestrians. The military said forces at the scene shot at the attacker, although the attacker's condition was not known. The attack took place in the Israeli settlement of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem.

Another Palestinian teen was also shot and wounded by Israeli forces at a protest in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis. 

Thursday's violence brings the number of Israelis killed in the wave of violence to 15. At least 88 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, 52 of them said by Israel to be attackers, the remainder killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

Although Tel Aviv and its surrounding suburbs have seen a number of attacks during the latest wave of violence, much of the recent unrest has been concentrated around Hebron, a city where several hundred Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among thousands of Palestinians.

The violence erupted in mid-September over tensions surrounding a Jerusalem holy site and quickly spread further into Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians say the violence is rooted in frustration at decades of living under Israeli occupation, while Israel accuses Palestinian leaders of inciting the unrest. 

Al Jazeera and the Associated Press