A driver has rammed his car into pedestrians in Jerusalem injuring several people in an attack mirroring similar incidents last year, Israeli police have said.

The incident took place outside an Israeli border police station on the line separating West and occupied East Jerusalem.

“A young man rammed his car [into pedestrians], and then got out and tried to stab people” before being shot and wounded by an armed security guard, Luba Samri, a police spokeswoman, said in a statement.

“Four people were injured,” she added, describing the incident as a “terrorist attack”.

Paramedics said they were treating five people for injuries after the attack.

Four of the five who were hurt were Israeli border police women.

Friday’s incident comes ahead of an Israeli snap general election to be held on March 17 and a day after the Palestinian leadership said it would end security cooperation with Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The incident is reminiscent of a spate of attacks in Jerusalem in October and November last year, where Palestinians ploughed vehicles into groups of pedestrians, killing several people.

The attackers were shot dead at the scene on those occasions.

Those incidents followed growing tensions over right-wing Jewish demands to be able to pray inside Jerusalem’s holiest compound and the expansion of Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem.

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967 when it illegally annexed it in a move not recognised internationally. Al Jazeera