HEBRON, Palestinian Territories–Four Israelis, one of them a pregnant woman, were shot dead near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kyriat Arba on Tuesday, just ahead of renewed peace talks, in what police and the military said was a Palestinian ambush.
Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said a car in which the victims were travelling came under fire on a road between the settlement and the Palestinian village of Bani Naim, near the city of Hebron.
"Obviously it was a terrorist attack," he said.
Israeli army spokeswoman Avital Leibovitz said she believed the dead were settlers from the area, adding that the road on which they were attacked was used by both Palestinians and Israelis.
She said that many rounds were fired into the Israelis' vehicle.
Rescue services said the victims were a man and woman around 40 years old and another man and woman in their twenties. The military said one of the women was pregnant.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the attack "painful and grave." He said he had informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on his way to Washington for a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to renew direct peace talks after a 20-month hiatus.
"The army and the security forces will do everything they can to lay their hands on the murderers," Barak said in a statement.
Liebovitz said troops were combing the area in a hunt for clues and suspects
It was the first fatal attack on Israelis in the West Bank since June 14, when a policeman was killed and two others wounded, also in the Hebron area.
In the Gaza Strip, the Islamic Hamas movement was quick to praise the shooting, while not explicitly taking responsibility for it.
"Hamas blesses the Hebron operation and considers it as a normal reaction to the occupation crime and a proof of the failure . . . to abort the project of resistance, "Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.
Briefing journalists by conference call, Leibovitz said she hoped the latest shooting was an isolated event and did not did not herald a new escalation of violence.
"I hope its a pinpoint operation and will not cause any deterioration in the security situation in the area, which was very stable in the past two years or so," she said.
Netanyahu has said the latest attempt to reach a binding peace treaty with the Palestinians must be based on "firm security arrangements" to ensure that future Palestinian rule in the West Bank does not lead to the territory becoming a staging point for attacks on Israelis.
Abbas says that talks will implode unless there is a full halt to Israeli settlement building.
