RAMALLAH, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Two Palestinians were killed and a third one was critically injured early on Monday by Israeli soldiers north of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian security sources and eyewitnesses said.

Security sources told Xinhua that an Israeli army force stormed the Jalazone refugee camp near the city and opened fire at a Palestinian vehicle that drove in the area, killing two Palestinians and injuring a third one.

The two were identified as Basel Basbous and Khalid Anbar, both refugee camp residents, according to the sources. The injured, identified as Salamah Ra'fat, was from the town of Beir Zeit.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said that the soldiers took away the bodies of the slain Palestinians and detained the third one.

Meanwhile, an Israeli army spokesman said in a press statement that Israeli troops shot two Palestinians dead near Ramallah in the pre-dawn hours of Monday after they attempted to run over soldiers during an arrest raid in the area.

According to the spokesman, while troops were operating in the Jalazone refugee camp in an attempt to arrest "a terror suspect," a vehicle began to accelerate toward the soldiers.

A spokesman of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza said in a press statement that killing two Palestinians near Ramallah "comes within the framework of the occupation's extended aggression against our people in the West Bank."

"The aggression of the occupation and its crimes will not give it security on our land and will only bring it more resistance and insistence on confronting it with all the means that our people possess," said spokesman Abdulatif al-Qanou'a.

The tension between Israel and the Palestinians has been mounting over the past few months after the Israeli army intensified its military actions and operations against Palestinian militants and activists in the West Bank.