A Palestinian died overnight in an Israeli hospital after being shot by Israeli soldiers, Palestinian medical workers said on Tuesday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers shot the 17-year-old late on Monday after he threw a firebomb at a guard post at the Jewish settlement Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. He was taken to a hospital in Jerusalem, she said.

Palestinian residents of the nearby Jalazone refugee camp said they heard the shooting and saw soldiers surrounding the youth some 400 metres (yards) from the settlement's perimeter.

Medical workers said a second Palestinian was slightly wounded by the soldiers' gunfire.

About half a million Jewish settlers live among some 2.5 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, land Israel captured in a 1967 war that Palestinians want for a future state. (Reporting by Ali Sawafta; editing by Andrew Roche)