Two Israeli soldiers were killed and several more wounded on Friday when two Palestinian gunmen opened fire near a checkpoint outside Hebron in the occupied West Bank, triggering the biggest Israeli military crackdown in the territory in months — just days before Israel's national election.

The military identified the slain soldiers as Staff Sgt. Ron Yonatan Roytman and Sgt. Yuval Shai Svilem. Troops returned fire and killed both attackers, identified by Israeli media as Mohammad and Firas Jaaba, 27-year-old cousins from Hebron, after a firefight that lasted more than 20 minutes at the Judea Junction on Route 35. Five Israelis were wounded, two of them critically.

The Israeli military said it found a large cache of ammunition in the gunmen's vehicle and believes they were planning a larger attack on civilians along the same highway. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an immediate closure of Hebron, a city of more than 200,000 people, and said troops would carry out a house-to-house weapons sweep before demolishing the attackers' homes.

A vote under lockdown

"We are prepared for an extensive operation in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu said, using Israel's biblical name for the West Bank, according to CBS News. He canceled his campaign events for the day and convened his security chiefs, framing the attack as an attempt to influence Tuesday's election. Hamas did not claim responsibility but called the ambush a "heroic" response to what it described as Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

"PREPARED FOR AN EXTENSIVE OPERATION IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA."

The IDF said it had already arrested roughly 70 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank in the past week. According to a Times of Israel live account of the attack, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for the Palestinian Authority to be dismantled, though the paper noted no evidence has emerged tying the PA to the shooting. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich visited the scene hours after it happened.

The ambush follows weeks of rising violence in the West Bank, including a recent spike in attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian communities, and comes as both the West Bank and Gaza are expected to be under a security lockdown through Tuesday's vote.

What's next: IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has ordered preparations to send reinforcements to Central Command if the operation widens. Israeli police and the military are expected to maintain the Hebron closure through the election, with officials saying the scope of any broader operation will depend on what investigators find in the coming days.