John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has announced talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a belated US attempt to prevent two weeks of deadly violence from escalating further.

Kerry said he would meet Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Germany this week, before meeting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

It is the first time Kerry has confirmed media reports of a meeting with both Netanyahu and Abbas. He did not say where he planned to meet Abbas other than that it will be in the Middle East, but the meeting is widely expected to take place in Jordan.

More than 40 Palestinians and seven Israelis have died in the recent street violence in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, triggered in part by Palestinians’ anger over what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

On Sunday, a Palestinian attacker armed with a gun and a knife opened fire in a southern Israel bus station, police said, killing an Israeli soldier and wounding 10 people in the latest incident in a month-long wave of violence.

The attack came as Israeli police started constructing a concrete fence between Palestinian and Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, in addition to the concrete blocks placed on roads creating checkpoints.

Police said the assailant entered the central bus station in the southern city of Beersheba and began shooting and stabbing people. They said an Israeli soldier was killed, five police were lightly wounded and five civilians were wounded to varying degrees.

Yoram Halevy, a police commander in southern Israel, told reporters that in addition to the knife and gun with which he entered the bus station, the attacker also snatched a weapon from the soldier he killed.

The attacker, whose identity was not immediately known, was shot and killed.

A foreigner was shot by police during the attack after they apparently mistook him for an assailant. Halevy said security forces responding to the attack entered the bus station from another area and saw a “foreign national”, shooting and wounding him.

Israeli media said the foreigner was an Eritrean national living in Israel.

Police say the fence erected between Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian neighbourhood, and Armon Hanatziv, a Jewish one, are to stop rock throwing and fire bomb attacks. The fence resembles the West Bank separation wall.



Residents in Armon Hanatziv have complained about feeling unsafe and about violent attacks since the death of motorist Alexander Levlovich, who lost control of his car after, police say, Palestinians threw rocks at his vehicle as he drove in the neighbourhood.



While in Europe Kerry said he would also hold meetings on Syria. He has been pressing Russia to agree on a political transition in the country that would see Bashar al-Assad leave power.



Kerry’s comments came as Israel and the US resumed talks in Jerusalem on future military aid that Netanyahu suspended in protest against the Iran nuclear deal.

