OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, January 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The Ezzedin Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic resistance group Hamas, claimed responsibility late Thursday, January 23, for a shooting ambush near Al-Khalil which left three Israelis dead.

The attack came hours after Israeli occupation troops disguised as Palestinians raided a pool hall in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem and abducted 10 people, Palestinian security services said.

Palestinian citizens has also said that 62 shops built on 28 lots were razed to the ground by Israeli occupation troops Thursday, wrecking businesses that had been part of a thriving market close to the Palestinian town of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank.

In a leaflet distributed throughout the West Bank city, the group said it had carried out the attack in response for "the aggression of the Israeli army and its attacks on Palestinian civilians", Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Three Israelis were ambushed Thursday evening by an unknown number of fighters at the Kvasim junction just south of the West Bank town, Israeli medical sources said.

The men were critically injured and later died of their wounds, reported the Israeli Haaretz newspaper on its website.

Israeli security sources confirmed that three Israelis were killed in a shooting attack near Al-Khalil and said intensive searches were underway for the attackers.

In the wake of the attack, the Israeli occupation army clamped a curfew on the nearby Palestinian village of Yatta, the Israeli army radio said.

Around 600 hard-core Jewish settlers (according to foreign pacifists and reporters, always heavily-armed and on the rampage most of the time) live in Al-Khalil, guarded by Israeli soldiers, separating them from the 120,000 Palestinian population of the city.

Over the past six months, 19 Israelis have been killed in shooting attacks in and around Al-Khalil, the most serious of which was a double ambush on November 15 that left 12 dead, nine of them Israeli soldiers.

On Friday, January 17, two Palestinian resistance activists killed an Israeli soldier and wounded three others in an attack on a West Bank Jewish settlement.

On Friday, December 27, Palestinian man killed four Jewish settlers, and wounded seven others in a Jewish settlement in the southern West Bank before being shot dead himself by the Israeli army.

The Islamic Jihad resistance movement said it carried out the attack in retaliation for the assassination of one of its cadres (Hamza Abu al-Roub), as well as seven other Palestinians Thursday, December 26, by the Israeli occupation forces.