New York: The United Nations Security Council will meet on Monday to discuss the bloodiest spate of Israeli-Palestinian violence for years, diplomats said on Saturday.

Sweden, Egypt and France requested the meeting to "urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported",  Sweden's deputy UN ambassador, Carl Skau, posted on Twitter.

Israel sent extra troops into the occupied West Bank on Saturday and raided the home of a Palestinian who stabbed three Israelis to death in a settlement on the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, Israel's military said. 

The diplomatic fallout also intensified as the Palestinian Authority served notice that it was cutting off all contacts with Israel at a time when the US administration is trying to restart peace talks.

Six deaths on Friday escalated tensions that have been rising in Jerusalem – and spilling over into the West Bank and Gaza Strip – following new Israeli security measures at entrances to al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, an area known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Israel installed metal detectors and security cameras at the site after two Israeli policemen were killed there last week by a gunman who was a Palestinian citizen of Israel. Israel insists the measures are a security precaution, but Palestinians view them as a tightening of Israeli control. Muslims across the world have demanded the devices be removed.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, described the metal detectors and cameras as "a flagrant violation of the rights and freedoms of Palestinian Muslim worshippers".

"Such intrusive and dehumanising practices," she said, "aim to provide Israel with carte blanche to exercise security control over the holy sites of Jerusalem."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had considered removing the devices after taking advice from the army and internal security service, but the government left the decision to police.

Protests resulted in a spate of deaths across the city on Friday.

In what has been described by Israel as a terrorist attack, a Palestinian allegedly entered a home in the Halamish settlement, fatally stabbing three civilians – two men and a woman – and wounding another woman, before being shot at the scene.

Three Palestinian protesters were earlier fatally shot in separate clashes in and around Jerusalem. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified them as Muhammad Mahmoud Sharaf, 17, from the neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud in East Jerusalem; Muhammad Abu Ghanam, from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of al-Tur, on the Mount of Olives; and Muhammad Lafi, 18, from Abu Dis, a Palestinian town on the outskirts of the city.

Israeli police said rioters also threw rocks and firebombs and set off fireworks in the direction of the security forces, endangering them.

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who had cut short a trip to China to handle the spiralling crisis over the metal detectors, announced late on Friday that he was freezing contacts with Israel until it cancelled the new measures at the holy site.

Bloomberg, New York Times, Reuters