Israel-palestinian ViolenceTwo more 'knife attackers' killed

New knife attacks on Israelis in the West Bank left a soldier lightly wounded yesterday, while two Palestinian assailants were shot dead by security forces, police and the army said.

While a spate of protests and attacks in Jerusalem has eased, tensions have flared in Hebron. The volatile city has also been the scene of several knife attacks against Israeli soldiers.

In one attack yesterday, a Palestinian stabbed and lightly wounded an Israeli border guard near a shrine in Hebron known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque.

In the second incident a Palestinian, Farouq Sider, 19, was shot dead when he allegedly tried to stab an Israeli soldier in Hebron.

The death of the attackers takes the number of Palestinians killed in the recent unrest to 62. Many of those killed have been shot in anti-Israeli protests.

Protests in Hebron in recent days have erupted over Israel's policy of withholding the bodies of attackers, one of a series of measures to try to dissuade attacks on Jews, which began in early October as tensions over the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem boiled over.

Palestinians have long feared Israelis seek to change the rules governing the site, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews.