JERUSALEM, April 1, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - A man stabbed and wounded three people in an knife attack Sunday in a shopping mall near the Israeli town of Ashdod, emergency services said.

A police spokesperson said a "terrorist" had "stabbed three people" using two knives before being "neutralised" by local police. The official did not say whether this meant the attacker had been killed.

The attack took place in the Friendly Mall in Gan Yavne, a district next to the central town of Ashdod, Zaki Heller, spokesman of Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Paramedics are treating three casualties, some in serious condition," he said, adding that they had been taken to Assuta hospital at Ashdod.

The suspect was thought to be 19 years old and from Hebron, in the West Bank, the police spokesperson told AFP.

Several similar attacks have taken place in Israel over the last few weeks, including one earlier Sunday at a bus station in the southern city of Beersheva.

The increased attacks across Israel and the occupied West Bank has come since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

Some 1,160 people -- mostly civilians -- were killed in the unprecedented Hamas attack in Israel, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has so far killed at least 32,782 people, mostly women and children, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday.