A Palestinian employee stabbed two guests at a hotel outside Jerusalem on Friday in what Israeli police described as a militant attack, the second in the area this week.

According to police, the employee came out of the kitchen at a hotel in the bucolic Kibbutz Tzuba and stabbed two of the guests in the dining room.

An off-duty police officer and the hotel’s dining manager tackled the attacker until more officers arrived and arrested him.

Police officers were seen sealing off the hotel entrance and searching the suspect's car outside.

Israeli paramedics said they evacuated two men, aged approximately 50 and 25, to a nearby hospital. They said both had been stabbed in their torsos, the older man left in critical condition.

Israeli police said the attacker was from the Shuafat area in east Jerusalem, and that three other suspects were also arrested on suspicion they were involved in the attack.

Friday’s attack comes days after a shooting by two Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank that killed six people in Jerusalem. The militant Hamas group, which runs Gaza, claimed responsibility for Monday’s attacks.

The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and sparked a surge of violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

AP video by Mahmoud Illean