Israeli shelling after gun attack

Shooting victims Ilana Shmulyan and year-old baby arrive at hospital

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israeli tank shells killed a Palestinian policeman in the West Bank city of Nablus Thursday after an attack on Jewish settlers.

Palestinian officials said four policemen and a 12-year-old boy were wounded in the shelling, launched after Palestinian gunmen shot and wounded Israeli settler parents and their infant baby near the Palestinian-ruled city.

CNN's Mike Hanna said Thursday's violence had left the fragile Middle East cease-fire "in tatters."

The Palestinian gunmen shot at the settlers near the West Bank settlement of Har Braha.

The father was seriously injured with a bullet wound to the head. He was flown to a Tel Aviv hospital for treatment. A mother and her child were slightly injured.

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The family was in a car near the Palestinian West Bank city of Nablus when they started to pass a car along the roadside, witnesses said.

They said that three men dressed in Israeli army uniforms men got out, opened fire at the settlers and then fled.

In response, Jewish settlers smashed the windows of Palestinian cars, including an ambulance, with stones and rifle butts in the village of Huareh, south of Nablus, The Associated Press reported.

A short while later, an Israeli motorist was critically wounded in a shooting ambush near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to the Palestinian town of Hebron.

CNN's Hanna said a security meeting Wednesday night between Israeli and Palestinian officials had ended abrupty with no movement forward.

In other developments Thursday, the Israeli army said a doctor's claim that a Palestinian woman in labour lost her baby because her car was held at a military checkpoint for an hour was "unfounded."

A Palestinian doctor said the woman gave birth to a baby boy while her vehicle was at an Israeli army checkpoint Wednesday near Tubas in the northern West Bank. He said the boy died before reaching a medical clinic.

The Israeli army disputed the report.

"The Palestinian claim is not known to the Israel Defense Forces and therefore it seems to be unfounded," said a statement from the Israeli army. The statement said an investigation was continuing with soldiers and commanders from the checkpoint being interviewed.

In New York on Wednesday, an "embarrassed" United Nations announced it will launch an internal investigation into the facts surrounding a videotape taken by U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon a day after the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers last year.

The investigation will look into the "handling of the tape and exchanges with the Israeli government."

"The reason for the inquiry is that, frankly, the organization was embarrassed and its credibility was hurt by what appears to be a mishandling of this event," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

In Washington on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked if he had a "Plan B" to help end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, considering the violence has continued since the Mitchell report, a plan put forward by an international committee.

"The plan that is out there -- A, B and C -- is the Mitchell report," answered Powell. "It calls for a cessation of violence and hostility toward one another, it calls for confidence-building measures to restore trust and security cooperation, and it also leads to negotiations on final status."

Powell spoke after meeting in Washington with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about the conflicts in the Middle East and Macedonia as well as other issues.