Palestinian killed after alleged car-ramming attack as Israel locks down Ramallah

The health ministry said the man, who was not named, was shot in the Al-Bireh neighbourhood of Ramallah.

The army said he "attempted to run over" soldiers, lightly injuring one.

The latest incident came as Israel encircled Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative and economic hub, following a deadly shooting attack earlier in the day that killed two Israelis and critically injured two more near Ofra settlement.

Entrances and exits to Ramallah were sealed and the army entered multiple neighbourhoods, AFP correspondents said. Clashes broke out in multiple spots.

Thursday's shooting came only hours after Israeli forces killed two militants allegedly responsible for West Bank attacks that claimed the lives of three Israelis, including a baby.

The armed wing of Hamas claimed the two Palestinians as its "fighters."

One of them was Salah Barghouti, a 29-year-old accused of shooting seven Israelis on Sunday, also at a bus stop near the Ofra settlement.

The Shin Bet Israeli internal security service said that other members of Barghouti's group, all of them affiliated with Hamas, had been arrested overnight.

A woman who was seven months pregnant was among those wounded in that attack.

Doctors tried to save her baby boy with an emergency caesarean, but he died on Wednesday and was laid to rest in Jerusalem.

The mother remains in hospital in a serious condition.

The other Palestinian killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday night had been suspected of shooting dead two Israelis in October.

Ashraf Naalwa, 23, was killed when forces tried to arrest him near Nablus in the West Bank, Israel's Shin Bet security service said.

In another incident, a Palestinian stabbed two Israeli border police in Jerusalem's Old City before being shot dead, in the bloodiest 24 hours to hit the West Bank and Jerusalem in months.

Following Thursday's shooting attack, Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank blocked off roads and threw stones at Palestinian cars.

More than 20 far-right Israeli activists were detained.

An ultra-right faction of Israel's Jewish Home party called for a Palestinian road ban on major West Bank thoroughfares, threatening to bring down Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's fragile coalition if the measures were not applied.

Other Israeli settler councils throughout the occupied West Bank have vowed to hold protests and demanded that the government recognise illegal settler outposts.

Israel seized control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem in a 1967 war. Around 600,000 Israelis now live in settlements there considered illegal by the international community.