JERUSALEM, Dec 28: Two young Israeli settlers and a Palestinian were killed after an apparent exchange of fire in the south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, emergency services said.

The two men in their 20s had been out walking with a female friend to a spring west of the flashpoint city of Hebron and the settlement of Telem when they came under fire and shot back with their personal weapons, the emergency services said.

The woman was in a state of shock but escaped unharmed after hiding from the gunmen, she told the emergency services.

“A small group of Israelis who were out hiking near Telem were attacked by terrorists who opened fire,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

“The police and border police have launched a manhunt in the area and set up roadblocks to track down the terrorists.” It was the deadliest attack on settlers in the West Bank since the start of this year, which has seen a sharp fall in anti-Israeli attacks.

On Nov 19, a woman settler was killed by Palestinian fire as she was driving in the northern West Bank.

On Feb 26, police announced that a body found north of Hebron was that of a settler who had been killed in a knife attack.

The latest deaths brought to 6,010 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to a tally.—AFP