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JERUSALEM, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Israel's police said they shot a young Palestinian woman dead after she tried to stab police officers in East Jerusalem's Old City on Wednesday afternoon.
Police Spokeswoman Luba Samri confirmed the woman's death.
According to Samri, the woman approached a police force near Damascus Gate with a knife in her hand.
"She tried to stab them," Samri said, adding that the officers "reacted quickly and neutralized her."
The incident came two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israeli ministers and lawmakers could renew their controversial visits to the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound within three months.
The compound, holy both to Jews, as the Temple Mound, and to Muslims, as Haram al-Sharif, has been a focal point of much of the recent wave of violence that began in September 2015.
Since the beginning of the unrest, Palestinians have killed 41 Israelis and two U.S. nationals, while Israeli forces and civilians killed at least 238 Palestinians, most of them alleged attackers.
Israel accuses the Palestinian National Authority of "inciting" the unrest. The Palestinians say it is the result of 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, home to more than 5 million Palestinians.
