A Palestinian stabbed a police officer with a kitchen knife before he was shot dead in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon on Tuesday, police said. 

Police said an officer began checking a person who aroused his suspicion when "the attacker pulled out a knife and attacked the officer."

The officer "responded quickly, fired and neutralised the suspect, whose death was declared on site," police said.

The officer was hospitalised with light wounds. The assailant was a man in his 40s from the flashpoint city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, police said.

The attack comes amid a rising tide of violence among Israelis and Palestinians. 

Four shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks in Israeli cities have left 14 people dead since late March. 

Over the same period, Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinians, including assailants, according to an AFP tally. 

On Sunday, Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian woman who stabbed a policeman in the centre of Hebron, a powder keg where around 1,000 Jewish settlers live under heavy military protection among 200,000 Palestinians.

The same day, the army shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian woman who they said failed to heed warning shots near the West Bank town of Bethlehem. 

The incidents came as Israeli forces round up suspects in the northern West Bank after a man from Jenin shot and killed three people in Tel Aviv.