GAZA, Jan 24: Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinians and unleashed airstrikes on Friday after militants killed three soldiers four days before Israel’s general election.

The army action was likely to boost rightist Likud party Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Tuesday’s balloting. Israelis broadly back tough military action against a Palestinian uprising and shun his main rival’s softer line.

In the northern West Bank near Nablus, Israeli soldiers guarding the Jewish settlement of Shavei Shomron killed a Palestinian man and a woman. The army said a group of Palestinians had fired at the soldiers. A third Palestinian was arrested and a fourth fled.

“We found on the Palestinians a rifle, grenades and an explosive charge. It looks like they planned to use them on the settlers or the troops stationed there,” an army spokesman said.

The dead man was identified by Palestinians as a 20-year-old Hamas activist, Ayman Hinawi, and the woman as 48-year-old Suad Jadallah.

The incident followed a Palestinian ambush on Thursday night that killed three Israeli soldiers on patrol along a road used by Jewish settlers near Al Khalil.

The Hamas said it had carried out the attack to avenge Israeli military actions against the Palestinian uprising for statehood.

Israel responded with airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Friday, damaging a mosque and destroying 10 houses in Rafah, near the border with Egypt. Heavy firefights erupted between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters during the raid.

A missile also struck a church built in 1882 and which now houses a hospital. Bishop Riah Abu El Assal, of the Anglican Church in occupied Al Quds, said that windows had been blown out and part of the roof had caved in.—Reuters