Palestinian shot dead, Israeli wounded in stabbing attack near Ibrahimi mosque

A Palestinian youth was shot dead after he allegedly stabbed and critically wounded an Israeli man near the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron's Old City on Monday afternoon, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said Israeli Border Police shot the Palestinian after he stabbed an Israeli man in his 40s.

The Israeli was evacuated to Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem for medical treatment in critical condition.

Rosenfeld was unable to confirm whether the Palestinian was still alive, but local sources in Hebron told Ma'an he had died from his wounds.

The area around the mosque -- the site of a number of deadly encounters recently -- was afterward closed off by Israeli police forces.

The Ibrahimi Mosque is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, who refer to it as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

It has been surrounded by a series of tightly controlled checkpoints since 1994, when a US-born Israeli settler, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Palestinians inside the mosque.

Hebron city has borne the brunt of violence since a wave of unrest swept the occupied Palestinian territory at the beginning of October.

The city center is home to some 800 notoriously aggressive settlers, who live under the protection of thousands of Israeli forces, surrounded by more than 30,000 Palestinians.

Roughly a third of the 112 Palestinian fatalities since the beginning of October have taken place in Hebron district, the majority in Hebron city.

While Israel has alleged that many of these Palestinians were attacking Israelis when they were killed, both Palestinians and rights groups have disputed these claims in a number of cases.