Sleeping girl, 13, stabbed to death in Israeli settlement

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian youth jumped over the security fence Thursday into a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, entered a family home and stabbed to death a 13-year-old Israeli girl as she slept in her bedroom, Israeli officials said.

Security cameras caught the assailant climbing the fence, but officers arrived at the house in the settlement of Kiryat Araba minutes too late. The girl, identified as Hallel Yaffe Ariel, had already been stabbed several times. She died on her way to a hospital.

The Associated Press reported that Hallel was a U.S. citizen.

Her attacker, identified as Mohammad Tra'ayra, 19, from the nearby village of Bani Na'im, was fatally shot at the scene, a statement from the Israeli military said.

The attack is the latest bloodshed in a wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis that began nine months ago but has tapered off recently. It also brought calls for increased security and more intensive building in Israeli settlements, which Palestinians and most of the international community condemn as illegal.

Later on Thursday, two Israelis — a middle-aged man and an elderly woman — were stabbed and wounded, one critically, in the coastal town of Netanya. The assailant, a Palestinian, was shot dead at the scene, Israeli authorities said.