Suspected Palestinian gunmen shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded two others in an attack on their vehicle in the occupied West Bank on Monday, police and an emergency service said.

"This was definitely a terrorist attack. It was carried out on an ordinary police vehicle and forces are now combing the scene," said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

There was no claim of responsibility from any Palestinian group for the attack near the town of Hebron in the southern West Bank.

The number of attacks and casualties in the West Bank has dropped markedly in the past few years. But last month armed Jewish settlers shot dead a Palestinian teenager near the city of Ramallah after he threw rocks at their car.

The last fatal attack on an Israeli was in February when a Palestinian policeman stabbed to death a soldier in the central West Bank.

Some 500,000 Jewish settlers and about 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and areas near Jerusalem annexed by Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.