Palestinian Gunmen Kill 2 More Israelis : Mideast: Victims are father and son. Three more sons are wounded in worst attack of escalating series in the West Bank.

A Jewish settler and his son were killed Monday evening by Palestinian gunmen who opened fire on their van in the worst of the escalating terrorist attacks in the West Bank. Three more sons were wounded.

Scores of armed settlers, enraged by the killings, stormed through Hebron, shooting wildly down the darkened streets and breaking into Palestinian homes. Carloads of Israelis from other West Bank settlements streamed into the area.

Israeli troops, initially sent to search for the killers, struggled late into the night to restore order, but with little hope of breaking the growing cycle of violence here. “Traitors, traitors!” the settlers shouted at the soldiers.

“There could be a blood bath here, and I don’t want you in it,” said an Israeli army major, ordering settlers to return to their communities, telling those from outside the region to leave and declaring the area a closed military zone. “Turn around and go home.”

The attack brought to five the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians in the past week. According to Israeli military and police reports, 18 Israelis and 37 Palestinians have been killed since Israel and the PLO reached an agreement in September on limited Palestinian self-government.

“There is a war here,” declared Noam Arnon, a spokesman for the Jewish settlers living in Hebron, decrying Israel’s efforts to make peace with the Palestinians as “leading us to more and more bloodshed.”

In the West Bank town of Aroura, a Palestinian in his 30s was shot dead by an undercover squad of Israeli soldiers as he sat in front of his house Monday afternoon. Abdel Rahman Arouri, a member of the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, was a suspect in the killing of two Israelis in an ambush near Ramallah last week, according to military sources. No other details about his death were available.

In another incident, two other Israelis were wounded in a firebomb attack on a bus near Givat Zeev, a Jewish settlement north of Jerusalem near the West Bank village of Al Jib.

The killings near Hebron occurred about 6 p.m. Monday as gunmen opened fire from a passing car on Mordechai Lapid, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, who was in his van with three children while his son, Yisrael, 19, stood nearby trying to hitch a ride to Jerusalem from the hillside settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Lapid, who was about 50, died with his 19-year-old son at the scene, according to military sources. Three younger boys, ages 10, 12 and 17, were all wounded in the legs as more than a dozen bullets punctured the red van.

The attack occurred on the road leading down from Kiryat Arba to the main highway to Jerusalem, close to the spot where a Palestinian vegetable seller, a father of 13, was fatally wounded Saturday. Settlers had stopped the taxi in which he was riding, punched the driver and then opened fire.

Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, the Israeli chief of staff, visiting Hebron with other senior officers, said that a leaflet had been found in the van suggesting that the attack had been carried out by members of Hamas, as the Islamic Resistance Movement is known, from the Gaza Strip.

Soldiers imposed a curfew on Hebron, a city of 100,000 south of Jerusalem. Holy to both Muslims and Jews as the burial site of the biblical patriarch Abraham, Hebron has long been a flash point because it attracts the most zealous followers of both faiths.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin condemned Monday’s attack as an attempt to kill Israel’s peace agreement with the PLO but reiterated his determination to implement the accord.

“I have no doubt about the goal of the Palestinians who did this terrible murder, for they have just one goal--to create a chain of events that will bring the negotiations to an end,” Rabin said.

Under the accord signed Sept. 13 with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel is to begin withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho district in the West Bank next Monday. But Rabin said the pullback may be delayed while additional security measures are worked out to protect the settlers.

Arnon, reflecting the outrage of the 125,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, declared: “We have no faith in this government. It is a government of the extreme left, a government that signs agreements with terrorist organizations, a government that betrays the Jewish people. . . .

“This is the natural result if you give in to terrorism,” he continued. “The people should rise up and bring down this government.”

Angry demonstrations broke out throughout much of the country, according to state-run Israel Radio. The highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was blocked, tires were burned outside Rabin’s home in a Tel Aviv suburb and a number of demonstrators were arrested.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, on a Middle East tour in an effort to broaden the peace process, condemned the killing after returning to Jerusalem from Damascus, Syria, and Amman, Jordan.

“I offer my condolences not only to the family but to all of Israel,” Christopher said, grim-faced. “This killing must stop. Those doing the killing are the enemies of peace. We must try to grasp the opportunity and not let them kill this opportunity for peace. It is a tragic incident, and you can tell by my voice that I am angered by it.”