JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A masked man stabbed a Palestinian to death in Jerusalem on Wednesday in an attack Israeli police said may have been the work of a Jewish serial killer. Osama Musa Abu Aisha Natshe, a 41-year-old father of six, was killed before dawn just a few paces from his home in Abu Tor, a mixed Jewish-Arab neighbourhood that straddles East and West Jerusalem. Jerusalem police commander Yair Yitzhaki said police were investigating links between the killing and six previous knifings of Arabs, including one fatal stabbing, in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish quarter of the city in the past year. "Signs in the field indicate that this is a murder with a nationalist background," said Israeli Public Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani, using police terminology for attacks between Jews and Arabs. Israel Radio said markings on a knife found at the scene indicated that the killing was the work of a Jew. Kahalani and police commander Yitzhaki declined to comment, citing a court ban on publication of details of the stabbings. "He was stabbed by a man about whom I do not wish to speak or detail at present," Yitzhaki told reporters. He said an Israeli man with links to ultra-nationalist Jewish groups who was detained in October on suspicion of involvement in the previous stabbings had not been rearrested. Family members said a mortally wounded Natshe was able to stammer out a few details about his killer with his dying words. "He was on his way to work. A masked man suddenly jumped out from behind a bus and started stabbing him with a knife," said the slain man`s cousin Abdel Raouf Natshe. "He turned back towards home and shouted for his brothers. They came up, saw him soaked in blood, and called an ambulance," the cousin told Israeli army radio. The knifings began in late 1997 in Mea Shearim, the heart of ultra-Orthodox Jewish life in Jerusalem. Wednesday`s attack was the first since May, when a 51-year-old construction worker became the first victim to pay with his life. Police have said previously that they suspect the alleged serial stabber is out to avenge the killings of Jews by Palestinians in Jerusalem.