World Bulletin/News Desk

The bodies of two Arab Israelis were found in a burnt-out car in the city of Ramla in central Israel early Thursday in what police say may have been a murder.

"Preliminary examination of the scene has revealed that the two Arab residents of Ramla were murdered," Luba Samri, a spokesperson for the Israeli police, said.

She added that the two bodies, which were discovered in the early hours of Thursday, had been sent for autopsy in Tel Aviv.

Israeli public radio quoted one police source as describing the incident as a "double homicide."

This summer, three Jewish settlers confessed to abducting and murdering Mohamed Abu Khdeer, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

Tension has mounted in Jerusalem – and in the rest of the occupied West Bank – ever since the kidnap and murder of three Israeli settlers this summer and the subsequent abduction and murder of Abu Khdeer.

Both incidents preceded a devastating Israeli military onslaught on the Gaza Strip in July and August that left over 2,160 Palestinians dead – the vast majority of them civilians – and some 11,000 injured.