Israeli forces shoot Palestinian after attempted West Bank attack

The 25-year-old man, a resident of the southern West Bank city, approached a border police officer near the Ibrahimi Mosque carrying a knife.

"Officers responded when the suspect approached them armed with a knife," Israeli police said in a statement.

"The terrorist was shot and the area closed off."

The man was transferred to an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem for treatment. He remains under police custody and is said to be in moderate condition.

A toy gun and toy bomb were found in the man's possessions, Ma'an News Agency reported.

The Ibrahimi Mosque, known to Israeli-Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs, is surrounded by military checkpoints in the centre of the tense city.

Several hundred Jewish settlers protected by thousands of Israeli soldiers live in Hebron, home to over 200,000 Palestinians.

Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank routinely open fire at Palestinians who are carrying out, or are allegedly planning to undertake, attacks.

This week, Israeli soldiers shot and killed an Israeli settler at a checkpoint near Jerusalem after mistaking him for a Palestinian.

The man lived in the Pisgat Zeev settlement and had approached the checkpoint with an object in his hand, a police statement said. 

A wave of unrest which erupted in October 2015 has claimed the lives of at least 260 Palestinians, 41 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese, according to an AFP count.

Since the escalation in violence, Amnesty International has expressed concern about a rise in unlawful killings by Israeli military forces.

The group has documented dozens of cases where Palestinians, posing no imminent threat to life, were shot dead in what appear to extrajudicial executions.