WEST BANK, Palestine

Two European observers have been shot and killed by gunfire in the West Bank.

A monitor who survived the shooting and the army said a Palestinian gunman shot at the car from close range, killing two international observers -- a Swiss woman and a Turkish man. Another observer was slightly injured in the incident on a road used mainly by Jewish settlers near Halhoul, just north of Hebron.

Palestinian Authority and other officials denied that Palestinians were involved and blamed the attack on Israeli army.

"The Israeli army bears full responsibility for this crime," it said.

Exchanges of gunfire are reported to be occuring between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen in the area.

Hussein Ozar Salam, who was in the car and wounded in the attack, said he saw the gunman from the backseat.

"The (car) lights were on and we saw him. He was in a Palestinian police force uniform. He was carrying a Kalashnikov and we shouted to him that we are (from the observer force) TIPH, don't shoot toward us."

"We told him that we are from TIPH and he didn't care, he kept on shooting toward us and (my) colleagues were sitting in the front seat, just dead. The driver's blood splashed on my face," Salam told Israel Radio in an interview from hospital.

The observers, an unarmed group from six European Union countries known as the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), work there to monitor tensions between its Palestinian majority and a tiny enclave of Jewish settlers.