The military wing of Hamas has claimed responsibility for a shooting that killed four Israelis near Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
At least one gunman opened fire on a car driving on Highway 60 near the Kiryat Arba settlement on Tuesday.
The Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, claimed responsibility for the attack in a short statement posted on its website, and said it would be the first in a "series of operations" in the West Bank.
Israeli rescue services said the victims were two men and two women.
This is the first fatal attack on Israelis in the West Bank since June, when one police officer was killed and two others wounded in an ambush. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for that attack.
The shooting comes one day before Palestinian and Israeli officials are scheduled to meet in Washington in an effort to relaunch direct negotiations.
Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman, told Al Jazeera that Hamas had not planned any attacks intended to sabotage the Israeli-PA talks. But Hamdan said he was speaking for the political wing of Hamas, and that the Qassam Brigades could have planned the attack independently.
"We believe that there is no need to do something like this to sabotage these negotiations, because Netanyahu has [already] done this," he said.
Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, condemned the shooting, saying it was "against Palestinian interests". He said the PA will "take measures" to prevent future attacks.
Israeli officials have called security one of their top priorities for negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said that "the establishment of tangible security measures" was a precondition for talks with the PA.
Mahmoud Abbas acknowledged Israel's security concerns in an address earlier this week, but said they could not be used as a pretext for a "land grab". Kiryat Arba is built on land seized during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and is considered an illegal settlement by the United Nations.
PHOTO CAPTION
Israel's army chief Gabi Ashkenazi (R) arrives at the scene of a shooting attack which killed four Israelis near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron August 31, 2010.
Agencies