Rabbi Killed, Israel Policeman Hurt in West Bank Attack by Gunmen : Mideast: A radical Islamic group is suspected in the ambush on Mt. Hebron. The wounded officer was hitching a ride.

A rabbi was killed and an Israeli policeman wounded Sunday when two gunmen, believed to be members of a radical Islamic group, ambushed their car on Mt. Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Rabbi Amiram Olami, 36, head of a religious school in the small Israeli settlement of Otniel, south of Hebron, apparently was struck by several bullets when two gunmen opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles from the roadside, but military sources were uncertain whether Olami died from the shots or the subsequent crash.

Policeman Ehud Yitzhak, who had hitched a ride with Olami, returned the gunmen’s fire. Grazed by two bullets in the ambush, Yitzhak was reported in good condition in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital.

State-run Israel Radio reported that an anonymous telephone caller said the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, carried out the ambush. “We will continue the attacks,” the caller declared, speaking in Hebrew.

Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, the Israeli military chief of staff, warned the Cabinet during its regular Sunday meeting that further attacks--increasingly sophisticated, deadly and difficult to prevent--are likely from Hamas and other extremist groups opposed to Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Thirty-one people have been killed over the past two months in a series of such attacks by Muslim radicals, according to Israeli officials. There is now fear that extremists are preparing to repeat the deadly ambushes they carried out late last year, coinciding again with the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which began at sunset Sunday.

Leaders of the 120,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank blamed the attack on government plans to expand Palestinian self-government in the region and pull Israeli forces out of most Palestinian towns and villages in coming months.

“This is a direct result of the prime minister’s proposal for removing the army from city centers,” the Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, this is the hundredth victim since the accord was signed,” council spokeswoman Yehudit Tayar added, referring to Israel’s September, 1993, agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization on self-rule. “If this is what happens when the army is here, we can only nightmarishly imagine what would happen if they are not on the spot.”

Other settlers said that the army had recently reduced its patrols in the area, apparently as part of the planned pullback, although two Israelis were killed about half a mile from there early this year.

“There are dangerous killers in this area,” said Roni Shechner, head of the regional council of settlements in the Mt. Hebron area. “But the army is thinning its forces here, not reinforcing them.”

The gunmen fired more than 30 bullets at Olami’s car, military sources said, and the automobile flipped over as Olami lost control. His body was removed later from the crushed vehicle. A passing Palestinian motorist took the wounded policeman to a nearby Israeli settlement.

Israeli soldiers searched fields along the road after the attack, taking about 10 Palestinians in for questioning.