HEBRON, West Bank, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank on Friday as he tried to stab them, an army spokeswoman said.

The man, identified by locals as 41-year-old Fayez Faraj, was wounded in the Hebron shooting and taken to an Israeli hospital, where he died.

Locals said Faraj, a father of 10, had worked in a shoe factory. Television footage showed a small yellow cutting blade lying next to his body.

A large Palestinian city where several hundred Jewish settlers live with an Israeli military garrison to protect them, Hebron has seen frequent violence.

Such incidents have abated as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pursues a US-backed law-and-order and economic revival drive in the West Bank.

Many Palestinians remain bitter, however, about the absence of peace talks with Israel that might halt settlement expansion and lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.

An off-duty Palestinian police officer stabbed an Israeli soldier to death near the West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday, the army said. That attack drew condemnation from Abbas's government.

(Writing by Dan Williams and Mohammed Assadi; Reporting by Yosri Aljamal; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)