Two dead in shooting at bus stop in southern Israel

A gunman killed two people Friday at a bus stop in southern Israel, authorities said, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn the entire country was a frontline in the war.

Four others were wounded in the shooting near the southern town of Kiryat Malakhi, Israeli police said.

Two people who had been brought to the Kaplan Medical Center had been declared dead, a spokeswoman for the facility told AFP.

An AFP photographer at the scene reported the gunman had been killed and his body was still at the site of the attack. Police said he had been "neutralised" by a civilian at the scene.

"We have raised a national level alert," Israel's police chief Kobi Shabtai told reporters at the site, without providing details on the attacker.

Netanyahu warned that the entire country had become a frontline of war.

"The murderers, who come not only from Gaza, want to kill us all," he said in a statement.

"We will continue to fight until total victory, with all our might, on every front, everywhere, until we restore the security and quiet for all citizens of Israel."

On Sunday evening there were two stabbing attacks -- one against police in annexed east Jerusalem and the other against troops at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.

The attackers in both incidents were killed while there were no casualties among security forces.

Kiryat Malakhi is located about 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of the Gaza Strip, where Israel's war with Hamas militants has raged for more than four months.

The conflict was triggered by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

At least 28,775 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel's retaliatory military offensive on Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.