West Bank gas station attack kills four near Eli settlement

Israeli police stand next to the body of a Palestinian gunman Tuesday at the scene of a shooting attack near the West Bank Israeli settlement of Eli.

Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian attacker opened fire at a gas station near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding several others before being shot, authorities said, as violence continued to roil the occupied territory.

Israeli security forces said they also shot and killed another Palestinian assailant who later fled the shooting scene. The Hamas militant group claimed both assailants as members.

The attack underscored the fragility of the situation in the West Bank, where on Monday an Israeli military raid into the northern Jenin refugee camp ignited some of the fiercest Israeli-Palestinian fighting in years, killing six Palestinians and wounding scores more. Palestinian militants targeted Israeli military vehicles with powerful roadside bombs and Israeli forces deployed helicopter gunships to evacuate stranded troops.

The surge in violence has killed 128 Palestinians and 24 people on the Israeli side so far this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press, prompting many on either side of the conflict to fear a possible greater conflagration.

The Israeli military said it was sending reinforcements to the West Bank and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “settle the score with the murderers.”

“I want to tell all those who seek to harm us — all options are open,” he said in a video statement. “We will continue to fight terror with all our might and we will win.”

Later on Tuesday, a few carloads of Israeli settlers, outraged by the fatal shootings, drove to the…