Palestinian armed men have shot dead three Israelis and wounded four in a drive-by ambush outside a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli medical sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Sunday attack, the first of its kind in four months, at a hitchhiking post outside the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements about 15km south of Jerusalem.

"A Palestinian passed by in a car, let off a burst of fire, and struck down people standing at the hitchhiking post. There are wounded and apparently fatalities too," Shaul Goldstein, a settler leader in Gush Etzion, said on Israel Radio.

An Israeli military source spoke of a "shooting incident with casualties" but had no further detail for the moment.

Palestinian factions entered into a tacit ceasefire early this year, greatly reducing, but not entirely halting violence in a revolt that erupted in 2000.

The last such attack was in June, when Palestinian gunmen killed two teenage Jewish settlers in a drive-by ambush at a hitchhiking post near Hebron, not far from Sunday's ambush.

Sunday's attack came after the arrest of hundreds of suspected fighters in Israeli army raids around the West Bank in the past few weeks. Armed resistance groups had vowed revenge.

Israel completed a withdrawal of settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in September after 38 years of occupation; but continues to expand larger settlements in the West Bank.

Palestinians want both territories for a future state.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians, including Zakariye Zubeidi, center, the head of Jenin's branch of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, surround the body of Nihad Abu Ghanim, a top Islamic Jihad member in the northern West Bank, at the hospital in the West Bank town of Jenin Sunday Oct. 16, 2005. (AP)