JERUSALEM—Palestinian attackers unleashed a series of shooting and stabbing assaults on Israelis on Tuesday, including a stabbing spree in the ancient Mediterranean port city of Jaffa that killed an American tourist near where Vice President Joe Biden was meeting with Israel’s former president, police said.
The Jaffa assault came as Biden arrived on a two-day visit as part of a regional tour of the Mideast. He is to meet both Israeli and Palestinian leaders and there have been speculations he would try to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the man killed in Jaffa was an American tourist, but further details were not immediately available. A dozen Israelis, civilians and police officers, were wounded in the Palestinian knife and gun attacks.
Along with the Jaffa attacker, three other Palestinian assailants were shot and killed in the day’s rash of violence, the latest in a wave of near-daily Palestinian assaults on Israeli civilians and security forces that erupted in mid-September.
The bloodshed — mainly stabbings but also shootings and car-ramming attacks — has killed 28 Israelis. During the same time, at least 176 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire. Most of the Palestinians have been identified by Israel as attackers, while the rest were killed in clashes with security forces.
