JERUSALEM?A Palestinian militant opened fire on a bus in a disputed part of Jerusalem on Sunday, killing a 16-year-old Jewish settler and another person before being gunned down himself.

The shooting came just hours after the Israeli government told the army to prepare to withdraw from areas of West Bank towns it entered two weeks ago to hunt down and arrest Palestinian militants.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he thought the pullout from the first of the areas, Qalqilya, would go ahead as planned despite the shooting.

Witnesses and police said the gunman, identified by police as a member of the militant group Islamic Jihad, opened fire when the No. 25 bus stopped at a traffic light at a busy intersection in the French Hill district of Jerusalem.

The area, near several Palestinian villages and neighborhoods, is on land Israel occupied during the 1967 war and later annexed.