"The Martyr Khaled Akr Forces, armed wing of the PFLP-GC, laid an ambush Monday evening on the road leading to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Al-Khalil," reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoting a statement by the Damascus-based resistance group.

"As a group of Zionist settlers was passing, they (the Palestinian fighters) opened fire, killing and wounding a number of them," it said, boasting that "the group returned to base safely."

The operation came in response to the daily massacres perpetrated against our people in Palestine," the statement said, vowing to continue "the revolution until the land and its people are liberated."

Shortly after the attack, the Israeli occupation army claimed that their tanks fired shells at the building after the Palestinian fighters refused to surrender.

The building collapsed and the body of a Palestinian fighter, believed to be one of those who carried out the resistance operation, was found under the rubble Tuesday.

A house adjacent to the building and another one in the area, in which the Israeli army claimed it found explosive charges, were also dynamited later on Monday.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli tanks carried out brief incursions into the southern town of Khan Yunis, where a house said to have contained an explosives laboratory was blown up.

Meanwhile, in the northern town of Beit Hanun Israeli occupation troops abducted three Palestinians, Israeli military sources said.

Also in the West Bank, three Palestinians were abducted by the Israeli occupation army in the Bethlehem area overnight, including veteran PFLP member and co-founder Adnan Jaber, 60, and two young men, Palestinian security sources said.

The occupation army withdrew from Beit Hanun and adjacent towns Monday after four days of re-occupation allegedly aimed at preventing Palestinian fighters firing home-made rockets into southern Israel.

But Israeli military sources said it was a "redeployment" rather than a withdrawal.

It was the fourth operation claimed by the Damascus-based PFLP-GC since the beginning of the 29-month Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation.

More than 300 houses have been destroyed by the Israeli army over the past eight months allegedly to deter further anti-Israeli attacks with human rights groups slamming such barbaric policies of collective punishment.

To the north, near the town of Jenin, the Israeli army dynamited the family house of an Islamic Jihad local leader after ordering 12 people who lived there to evacuate, Israeli security officials said.