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Palestinian gunmen killed three Israeli soldiers outside a Jewish settlement near the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday night, Israeli military sources said.
Violence in a Palestinian uprising has trailed off recently as Israel has tightened a military clampdown on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Israel has voiced concern about a new surge in attacks in the run-up to its general election on Tuesday.
The Islamic militant group Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, both claimed responsibility for the ambush outside Hebron, close to the settlement of Beit Hagai.
"They suffered multiple bullet wounds," Devora, a member of the Magen David Adom medical rescue service, told Israel Radio.
"They were apparently shot from close range," she said.
Zvi Katsover, a settler leader from the Hebron area, told Israel TV the soldiers were apparently a patrol sent to root out gunmen who had been shooting in the area during the evening.
Palestinians rose up for independence in September 2000 after the breakdown of peace negotiations envisaging a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The Israeli army reoccupied or blockaded wide swathes of both territories last year in response to a spate of suicide bombings that killed scores of civilians inside Israel.
Tougher Israeli army closures and more widespread raids and round-ups of suspected Palestinian militants have considerably curbed the number of lethal attacks in the past two months.
But Israeli security authorities say troops and police continue to intercept would-be suicide bombers almost daily.
The Hebron area has been a frequent flashpoint of violence because a few thousand ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers live in enclaves heavily guarded by Israeli troops among more than 150,000 Palestinians chafing under curfew.
The army said 23 Israeli civilians, soldiers and security officers have been killed in the area since November 15.
Islamic militants and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have vowed no respite to attacks despite talks between leaders of 12 Palestinian factions including Fatah on a unilateral cease-fire in the uprising due to begin in Cairo on Friday.
Arafat has approved the Egyptian-drafted truce document and called for ending all attacks on Israeli civilians, including some 200,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.
But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's right-wing government has dismissed the cease-fire parley as a sham. Polls show Sharon and his Likud party cruising to re-election based on public approval for his crackdown on Palestinian violence.
(China Daily January 24, 2003)
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