Two of the soldiers were said to be in serious condition after the attack near the Yitzhar settlement south of the city of Nablus.
A previous toll given by Israeli army radio had spoken of two Palestinians killed and six Israelis wounded.
The Israeli army launched a manhunt using helicopters for the remaining attackers, said the radio. Residents of the settlement were told to stay indoors.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to AFP. It identified the dead militant as Ahmed Yasser Hamad, aged 18, from the village of Assira near Nablus.
A follow-up statement said that an unspecified number of fighters of the FDLP’s armed wing were involved in the operation.
It said attacks would continue “against the occupation forces and the settlers’ militia .... until their departure from the occupied Palestinian territories, including east Jerusale, eternal capital of the Palestinian state.”
Palestinian security sources also said the Israelis had carried out a pre-dawn raid at Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, wounding and taking prisoner four Palestinians.
Meanwhile the body of a second Palestinian killed as a pair attempted to swim ashore near the northern Gaza Strip settlement of Dugit was found on Sunday, Palestinian security services said.
The body of one man, Sayed el-Tatar, and a bag containing two Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition and four hand grenades, was recovered on Saturday after Israeli sailors spotted them and fired on them.
SHARON ARRIVES IN US: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in Washington on Sunday for talks with President George W. Bush on the Middle East conflict, already comforted by the US leader’s refusal to set a timetable for establishing a Palestinian state.
Sharon is to meet on Monday in the White House with Bush, who spent two days with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at his Camp David mountain retreat to discuss ways of ending the deadly spiral of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which continued on Sunday with an attack in the West Bank.
—AFP