Three Palestinians were killed and an Israeli soldier seriously wounded today in a gun battle south of the West Bank town of Nablus, the Israeli army and Palestinian medical sources said.
The firefight erupted in Tell, a Palestinian self-rule village on the edge of an area under Israeli military control, officials said.
Israeli helicopters were circling over the area near Nablus. It is an autonomous Palestinian town surrounded by Israeli forces but not entered by tanks since the October 17th assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister by Palestinian hardliners.
Fierce exchanges of fire prevented either side from evacuating the dead and wounded from the combat zone, the army said.
The latest killings brought the death toll of more than a year of unrest to 956, including 748 Palestinians and 186 Israeli.
AFP