JERUSALEM: Pale­stinian militant factions on Saturday dismissed a claim by the militant Islamic State group that it was behind the fatal stabbing of an Israeli policewoman in Jerusalem saying the assailants came from their ranks.

The Israeli security services also raised doubts about the veracity of the IS claim — its first for an attack in Jerusalem — which came with the jihadists facing defeat in their Iraq and Syria bastions.

Three Palestinians attacked officers just outside the walled Old City in annexed east Jerusalem late on Friday before being shot dead by security forces, Israeli police said.

In an online statement, IS said jihadist fighters had targeted a “gathering of Jews”, warning that “this attack will not be the last”.

But Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, dismissed the claim, saying the attackers had come from among its own ranks and those of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The assault took place as tens of thousands of Palestinians held night prayers at the nearby Al Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third-holiest site, on the third Friday of Ramazan.

According to police, two assailants opened fire on a group of officers who returned fire, and a third stabbed the border policewoman a short distance away before being shot.

Policewoman Hadas Malka, a 23-year-old staff sergeant major, was taken to hospital in critical condition and later died of her wounds.

Four other people were wounded in the incident, including two Palestinians from east Jerusalem and one from the West Bank city of Hebron.Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the IS claim was an attempt to “muddy the waters”, adding that the attack was carried out by “two Palestinians from the PFLP and a third from Hamas”.

The killing was “a natural response to the crimes of the occupier,” he said, echoing the language used by Hamas after other recent attacks against Israelis.

A spokesman for Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency said it was “impossible to corroborate (the IS claim) at this point.” The Israeli army said the assailants appeared have acted independently, like many of the attackers in a wave of unrest that has rocked Israel and the occupied territories since October 2015.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2017