A Palestinian stabbed and critically injured an Israeli in a town near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, police said.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the 19-year-old Palestinian stabbed the 42-year-old Israeli in a "terrorist" attack in Yavne.

The suspect was apprehended at the scene, and the victim taken to hospital with "critical" injuries, a later police statement added.

The Shin Bet security agency named the assailant as Ismail Ibrahim Abu Aram, born in 1998, and said he had no previous record of security-related offences.

Israeli soldiers later searched Abu Aram's home in Yatta, near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, a spokeswoman confirmed.

Footage released by Israeli authorities showed the man apparently browsing in a supermarket before attacking an employee.

The man manages to fight off the attacker but is stabbed several times.

A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has killed more than 290 Palestinians or Arab Israelis, 44 Israelis, two Americans, two Jordanians, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP toll.

Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.

Others were shot dead in protests and clashes, while some were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

The violence had greatly subsided in recent months but tension around the highly sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem saw a spike in July.

Source: AFP