Israeli guard shoots dead Jewish man in Jerusalem

Israeli police mistook a Jewish Israeli man for an attacker in central Jerusalem late on Wednesday and shot him dead, local media reported.

The Israeli news site Ynet said that police "mistook [the man] for a nationalistically motivated attacker," shooting and killing him.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Middle East Eye that initial reports indicated "it was a misidentification, and it's being looked into". He did not provide further details.

Meanwhile, a police spokesman told AFP that a private security guard accidentally shot and killed an Israeli man after an altercation.

A passenger got off a bus and got into an argument with two armed guards who were trying to get on it.

According to the guards, they asked the passenger for his identity papers but he then attempted to seize the gun from one of them, who took him to be a "terrorist" and shot him dead, police said.

The police shooting followed another deadly day in the occupied Palestinian territories that saw at least one alleged Palestinian attacker shot dead and some seven Israeli military and police personnel injured.

Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for an end to the violence as he met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a bid for calm after three weeks of deadly unrest.

Ban later told the UN Security Council by video conference from Amman that he was "not optimistic" about prospects for quelling the bloodshed, according to a diplomat at the closed-door emergency meeting in New York.

The secretary-general traveled to the region this week to urge the Israelis and Palestinians to pull back from a "dangerous escalation" that some fear could lead to a full-scale Palestinian uprising.

Ban offered no public proposals to end the unrest, but spoke of returning to "meaningful negotiations," after more than a year of frozen peace efforts and seething frustration with Israel's occupation.

"We will continue to support all efforts to create the conditions to make meaningful negotiations possible," Ban said after meeting Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"Our most urgent challenge is to stop the current wave of violence and avoid any further loss of life."