Israeli victims were off-duty soldiers

Two off-duty Israeli soldiers hiking near the West Bank town of Hebron were killed today by Palestinian gunmen but were able to fight back before they died.

The men killed one of their attackers and seriously injured another.

It was the first fatal attack on Israelis since Israel and the Palestinians formally relaunched peace talks last month and it prompted settler leaders to urge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to shelve a proposal to ease the release of Palestinian prisoners.

An army spokeswoman said the two Israelis were hiking in the area when they were attacked by a group of armed Palestinians and they returned fire with assault rifles they were each carrying. A woman companion who was with them fled and escaped unharmed, the army said.

No Palestinian group immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting, just north of Hebron, where about 500 Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among some 160,000 Palestinians and clashes between the two sides are frequent.

The ambush came hours after troops killed a bodyguard for the Palestinians’ chief negotiator in the West Bank town of Ramallah but there was no immediate indication that the events were connected.