An unusual daylight raid by the Israeli military in the West Bank city of Ramallah killed at least three Palestinians and injured 30 others on Wednesday. A short time later, a Gaza security chief was killed when his car blew up.

Israeli forces exchanged gunfire with Palestinian gunmen for about an hour in the city's main shopping area, said a Palestinian hospital official.

A badly injured Palestinian youth is helped after being shot by Israeli troops during clashes in the main square of Ramallah on Wednesday.
(Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press)

An Israeli army spokesperson said troops shot three Palestinian gunmen before withdrawing under fire as crowds threw stones.

Top Islamic Jihad member Mohammed al-Shoubaki was taken into Israeli custody during the raid, said army officials, who didn't give reasons for his arrest.

Al-Shoubaki was released from an Israeli prison in 2005 after serving 20 months of a 20-year sentence, said his family.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the raid.

"The Israeli government and army are doing their best to increase tensions and destroy the truce and prevent the return to the negotiating table to revive the peace process," said his spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rdainah.

The gunbattle was believed to be one of the fiercest in Ramallah — the seat of the Palestinian parliament — since a 2002 Israeli raid.

Car bombing kills Abbas loyalist

In a separate incident on Wednesday, a car bombing killed Nabil Hodhod, the head of the elite Preventive Security Service in central Gaza and an Abbas loyalist.

It was not immediately clear who planted the bomb, which was the second attack on security commanders in the volatile area in less than a week.

However, there has been an increasingly bloody power struggle between Hamas, which formed the government after winning a surprise victory in January's Palestinian Authority election, and the Fatah party led by Abbas, which had long dominated the Palestinian political scene.