At least three Israelis were killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber exploded in his vehicle last night at the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Kedumim.

The car blew up at 9:45 P.M. next to the Kedumim gas station.

Channel 10 TV News said the bomber apparently set off the explosives in the vehicle.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the explosion but said the explosives apparently went off prematurely.

The Israeli car was destroyed in the blast. A rescue service official said medics were unable to approach it even an hour after the blast because it was still on fire.

IDF officers who rushed to the site told Haaretz that the circumstances of the incident were still unclear and confirmed the victims had not yet been identified.

The officers mentioned two possible scenarios. The first is that the three Israelis thought to be in the car picked up the hitchhiking terrorist, dressed as an Israeli Jew, and the explosives he had with him. The second is that the terrorist was driving a car with Israeli license plates, and that he picked up the hitchhiking Israelis and then detonated the bomb.

A new offshoot of Fatah from the Balata refugee camp in nearby Nablus claimed responsibility. The group called itself Kateb al-Shaheed Chamuda and identified the bomber as Mahmoud Masharka, 24, of Hebron.

Lebanon's Al-Manar television station broadcast a claim of responsibility from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades faction of Fatah.


SETTLERS ATTACK PALESTINIAN SHEPHERD

Earlier yesterday, a Palestinian shepherd told police he was attacked by Jewish settlers in the southern Mount Hebron area of the West Bank.

The shepherd, from Khirbet Tana, was slightly injured. He said the settlers also attacked his sheep, hurting at least two of them.

In the Gush Etzion area of the West Bank, just south of Jerusalem, left-wing activists reported that settlers from Bat Ayin uprooted 200 Palestinian-owned olive trees recently planted by Israelis and Palestinians.