A stabbing attack nearly occurred in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, but was avoided thanks to the vigilant alertness of security personnel who stopped a 16-year-old Arab terrorist armed with a knife from carrying out his heinous designs.

The terrorist teen was on his way out of Shuafat, a neighborhood in the northeast of the capital which has proven to be a hotbed of terror in the recent wave of attacks, and which is located just south of the Jewish neighborhood Pisgat Ze’ev.

On his way out of the neighborhood, he raised the suspicions of the alert Border Police officers and IDF soldiers stationed at the exit to Shuafat.

The security personnel ordered the teen to stop, and while searching him they found a knife hidden under his clothes. 

In an initial investigation, he admitted that he was leaving Shuafat to stab security forces.

“The alertness of the officers and the soldiers and their operational vigilance enables the identification of irregularities in the behavior of those going through the passageway,” said the commander of the forces.

“Thanks to their alertness and professional actions harm to the lives of innocents was prevented.”

The incident is in fact the second such stabbing thwarted on Thursday, after an Arab terrorist armed with a knife was arrested in Hevron in Judea earlier in the day.

The back-to-back thwarted attacks come on the heels of a report released by the Israeli Security Agency, suggesting the more than three-month-long Arab terror wave appears to be on a downward trend.