Palestinian gunmen kill one person in West Bank

A man has been killed and seven other people have been wounded in an attack by three Palestinian gunmen near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, Israeli police and medics say.

A statement said the "terrorists" got out of a car at a checkpoint for Maale Adumim and fired automatic weapons at several vehicles waiting there.

Police killed two attackers while the third was wounded and arrested.

Palestinian armed group Hamas praised the attack but did not claim it.

There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas's deadly attacks in Israel on 7 October.

At least 394 Palestinians - members of armed groups, attackers and civilians - had been killed in conflict-related incidents in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or in Israel as of Tuesday, according to the UN. During the same period, 12 Israelis, including four security forces personnel, had been killed.

Israel's police force said Thursday's attack took place near the al-Zaim checkpoint on Highway 1, which connects Maale Adumim with Jerusalem.

"Three terrorists... arrived in a vehicle, left the vehicle and started shooting using automatic weapons towards vehicles standing in a traffic jam," it added.

"Security forces neutralized two terrorists on the spot, and after scans [were] conducted another terrorist who tried to escape was located and neutralized."

Israel's Magen David Adom ambulance service said the attack took place on a 500m-long (1,640ft) stretch of the highway and that paramedics found casualties in five vehicles.

A 20-year-old man in one of the vehicles died of his wounds, while a 23-year-old pregnant woman sitting in another was seriously wounded in the upper body, it added.

Four people were moderately wounded and one was lightly wounded. A number of other people were treated for shock.

All the wounded were evacuated to hospitals in Jerusalem.

The gunmen were identified as three Palestinian men from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, about 10km (6 miles) to the south-west.

Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, told journalists at the scene: "The enemies... want to hurt us. They hate us."

He said authorities needed to "distribute more weapons" to Israeli civilians for protection and install more roadblocks around Palestinian communities in the West Bank, arguing that "our right to life is superior to the freedom of movement" of Palestinians.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, another far-right politician, meanwhile called for the immediate approval of plans for thousands more homes in settlements like Maale Adumim.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, though Israel and the US dispute this.

Hamas called Thursday's attack a "natural response" to Israeli "massacres and crimes" in Gaza and the West Bank, and called on Palestinians to take up arms.

The shooting comes six days after a Palestinian man shot and killed two people at a bus stop near the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malakhi.