Israeli helicopter gunships ambushed a car in the West Bank on Saturday, killing three Palestinian militants and two children with a double missile strike, Palestinian witnesses and medical officials said. They said two Apache helicopters struck at Tubas village near Jenin in the afternoon, obliterating the vehicle and its occupants, including a nine-year-old boy and a girl, also 9.

But some residents of Tubas said the children were outside the car, felled by flying debris which also wounded seven other people.

The three other people killed were men belonging either to the Islamic organization Hamas or of a militant coalition called Palestinian Resistance, medical officials said.

However, Israel's occupation Army Radio and Qatar-based satellite service al-Jazeera said some or all of them hailed from al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Witnesses originally said four people were killed altogether, all of them militants. Medical officials attributed the confusion to the damage, which made identifying the dead difficult.

The Israeli occupation army had no immediate comment.

Israel regularly targets Palestinian militants waging a 23-month-old uprising for independence, a tactic which has drawn international condemnation.

Its recent F-16 air strike against Hamas's military commander in the Gaza Strip, which killed 15 other Palestinians including nine children, prompted a rash of revenge attacks by the group, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian children celebrate the first day of school in the West Bank city of Hebron, August 31, 2002. More than 1,000,000 Palestinian students started their school day in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (Nayef Hashlamoun/Re