Additional reporting by Maha Abdel Hadi, IOL Palestine correspondent

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, July 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - One Palestinian resistance fighter and one Israeli soldier were killed Wednesday, July 17, in an exchange of fire between a group of Palestinians suspected to be behind the attack on a bus near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The shootout also left three Israeli soldiers injured.

The source said the elite troops, backed by helicopter gunships, killed the man during a shootout near Emmanuel, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank near where the ambush took place on Tuesday, July 17.

The man was believed to belong to the group which ambushed the bus, killing eight people and wounding at least 19, according to Israeli officials, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

The Israeli military source said a group of Palestinians opened fire on Israeli troops combing the area after the attack, killing one soldier and wounding three soldiers, one of them seriously.

Israeli officials said three gunmen - reportedly clad in army uniforms - had stopped the armored bus with a roadside bomb and then killed passengers trying to flee with rifle fire and grenades.

The Emmanuel attack was the first against Israelis in nearly four weeks and was a carbon copy of an ambush by the Hamas Islamic group on the same spot near the settlement in the northern West Bank that left 11 Israelis dead last December.

Tuesday’s attack was claimed by three different resistance groups: the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the armed wing of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Meanwhile, the Israeli planes raid Wednesday, July 17, different neighborhoods in Nablus, especially the mountain area located west of the town and near the home town of Nasr Asida, Hamas member who Israel accuses of being behind the ambush attack.