TURMUS AYYA, West Bank — Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed into a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, setting fire to dozens of cars and homes to avenge the deaths of four Israelis killed by Palestinian gunmen the previous day, residents said.

Palestinians said one man was killed in the violence.

After nightfall, Israel carried out a rare airstrike on a car carrying suspected Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank. The drone strike, believed to be the first in the area in nearly 20 years, marked a major escalation by Israel in a more than year-long campaign against militants in the area. Palestinian media reported three were killed in the strike.

The fighting further raised tensions heightened this week by a daylong Israeli military raid that killed seven people, including a 15-year-old girl, in a militant stronghold, and Tuesday’s mass shooting, whose victims included a 17-year-old Israeli boy.

Wednesday’s settler rampage came as the Israeli military deployed additional forces in the occupied West Bank, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to build 1,000 new settler homes in response to the shooting.

Residents in Turmus Ayya said some 400 settlers marched down the town’s main road, setting fire to cars, homes and trees.

Mayor Lafi Adeeb said some 30 houses and 60 cars were partly or totally burned. At least eight Palestinians were hurt during clashes, which the army tried to disperse by firing rubber bullets and tear gas.

Palestinian medical officials said one man was killed by army fire.

The town’s Palestinian residents, including many who are U.S. citizens, were seething and in shock after the attack.

Streets were littered with broken pots, uprooted trees, charred yard furniture and skeletons of cars. At least one house was completely torched, the living room blackened, the furniture burned to ashes.

“It was terrifying, we just saw mobs of people in the streets, masked, armed,” said Mohammed Suleiman, 56, a Palestinian-American who lives in Chicago and was visiting his hometown.

Suleiman blamed the Israeli military, saying the soldiers turned their guns on the Palestinian residents instead of the vandals marching into the town with guns and firebombs and setting alight everything in their path.

The army was “literally clearing the way for them,” he said.

Abdulkarim Abdulkarim, 44, a resident of Ohio, said his family’s four cars were burned and house damaged. “They call us terrorists, but here you have terrorism supported by the government,” he said.

In the home of the Shalaby family, eight children hid on the third floor when they saw a mob of masked settlers slash tires and throw fuel on three cars. Within moments, their front yard erupted into a fireball. At least one of the armed settlers burst through the front door, trashing the sunroom and breaking windows.

“I just kept thinking I was going to die,” said Mohammed Awwad, 15, a U.S. citizen from Northern California visiting his grandparents.

Turmus Ayya, a town with luxurious villas with gardens and views of rolling olive groves, is frequently a target of settler attacks.

Tayem Abu Awwad, whose old car was torched in an attack last week, said his new Toyota was charred in Wednesday’s rampage.

The Israeli military said it sent forces into the town “to extinguish the fires, prevent clashes and to collect evidence.”

The military condemned “these serious incidents of violence and destruction of property,” adding that settler violence prevents it from carrying out its “main mission” of protecting national security and battling militants.

But later Wednesday, farther north, an angry mob of some 100 settlers ran through the town of Urif, throwing rocks at Palestinian homes and hurling a firebomb at the local school, said local Palestinian official Ghassan Daghlas.

Palestinian residents said Israeli security forces fired live bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at them as they tried to fend off the settlers.

Just as settlers were withdrawing from the town, the Israeli drone hit the Palestinian car near the militant stronghold of Jenin, turning the vehicle into a fireball.

The identities of the occupants were not immediately known. But the army said it had “identified a terrorist cell inside a suspicious vehicle” responsible for a number of recent shooting attacks on Jewish settlements.

Ismail Radwan, a leader in the Hamas militant group, called the drone strike a “dangerous development” and called on “the resistance in the West Bank to escalate the confrontation.”