JERUSALEM

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to build 840 new settlement units in the West on Monday, in the wake of a shooting attack that killed two settlers in the occupied territory. 

Israeli authorities said a Palestinian had stabbed an Israeli soldier near the Ariel settlement in the northern West Bank on Sunday before opening fire from his rifle on Israelis at a nearby bus station.

"Tomorrow, as the mayor of Ariel told me, we are beginning construction of some 840 housing units in a new neighborhood, a neighborhood that I approved two years ago," Netanyahu said in statements cited by Haaretz newspaper following a visit to the attack scene.

The Israeli army has launched a manhunt for the shooter, which Israeli media identified as Omar Abu Laila, a 19-year-old resident of the town of Zawiya in Salfit.

Early on Monday, Israeli forces raided several homes and shops in Salfit in the northern West Bank city in hunt for the suspected shooter.

Roughly 650,000 Israeli settlers currently live on more than 100 settlements built since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians want these territories -- along with the Gaza Strip -- for the establishment of a future Palestinian state.

International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "occupied territories" and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity there as illegal.

Writing By Ali H. M.Abo Rezeg