Israeli occupation forces killed three Palestinians after they attacked Israeli police outside Jerusalem's Old City on Wednesday, killing border policewoman and seriously wounding another.

It was the latest incident in an almost four-month long surge of Israeli-on-Palestinian deadly repression met with violent responses by Palestinians against setllers and Israeli soldiers.

The recent surge in violence has raised concern of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

Since the start of October, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 160 Palestinians. Meanwhile, almost daily stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks by frustrated and unarmed Palestinians have killed 25 Israelis and a US citizen.

The Palestinians launched the attack at the Damascus Gate, a busy plaza in the occupied East Jerusalem, after being stopped by police for an identity check, an Israeli police spokeswoman said.

At least one of the three Palestinians opened fire with an automatic rifle, killing one of the policewomen before they were shot dead by Israeli forces, the spokeswoman said.

The other policewoman was stabbed and wounded, and two pipe bombs were found at the scene, she said.

The current wave of protests by Palestinians and repression by Israeli occupation forces started in late July when toddler Ali Dawabsha was burned to death and three other Palestinians were severely injured after their house in the occupied West Bank was set on fire by Israeli settlers.

Settlement-building, racial discrimination, confiscation of identity cards, long queues at checkpoints, as well as daily clashes and the desecration of Al-Aqsa mosque, describe Palestinians' daily suffering.

The anger of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem has increased in the last three years after the Israeli authorities allowed increasing numbers of Jewish settlers to storm the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The surge in violence has been fuelled by Palestinians' frustration over Israel's 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state, and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Palestinian leaders say a younger generation sees no hope for the future living under Israeli security restrictions and with a stifled economy. The latest round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014.

*The story has been edited by Ahram Online.