Three Palestinians drove a car into Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Monday, critically injuring an officer, and were shot by troops, the military said.

Israeli media said two of the Palestinians were killed.

In a statement describing the incident as a Palestinian car-ramming attack, the military said two assailants were “neutralized” and a third was slightly wounded.

The military said an officer was critically injured and a soldier slightly hurt when they were run over some 10 km northwest of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

The troops had stopped their vehicle at the roadside at night - Israeli media reported it had broken down - and were deliberately struck, the military said.

Palestinians, many of them individuals without known associations with militant groups, carried out a wave of car-ramming attacks in the West Bank in late 2015 and 2016, but the frequency of such incidents has since decreased.

Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians seek to establish a state there and in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.

- Reuters