JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli and a Palestinian were killed on Thursday in two separate incidents in Israel and the occupied West Bank, officials said.

An Israeli man was stabbed to death in the southern Israeli city of Arad in what police said was “most probably a terrorist attack”.

“The investigation is continuing and police units are searching for the suspect who fled the scene,” said a police spokesman.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli settler shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank, in what the Israeli army said was a response to an attack by Palestinians throwing rocks, an account that Palestinians denied.

The Israeli military said the shooter had opened fire in self-defense as part of a group of settlers hiking near the village of Qusrah who had come under attack.

Local villagers identified the Palestinian who was killed as Mahmoud Odeh, a 48-year-old farmer. They denied that any clash had taken place before the shooting.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the incident as a “cowardly act and evidence to the world of the ugly crimes conducted by settlers against unarmed Palestinians”, his office said in a statement.

The Israeli military said troops arrived at the scene after the shooting. Israeli police said they were investigating the incident.

A wave of Palestinian street attacks that began two years ago has largely dissipated and it is uncommon for two deadly events to occur in the same day.

(Additional reporting by Mustafa abu-Ghaneyeh and Nidal al-Mughrabi, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Ralph Boulton)