(Updates with alleged affiliation of attackers)

NABLUS, West Bank, April 13 (Reuters) - Palestinian gunmen attacked and destroyed the car of a close aide of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday and Nablus security officials blamed Islamic Jihad.

The gunmen shot at the car of Nablus governor Jamal al-Mouhsen when he travelled in the Balata refugee camp in the city. He was not hurt, although one of his bodyguards was lightly wounded.

A Palestinian force extricated Mouhsen and his entourage from a house in which they sought refuge in the Balata camp, but the attackers later set about the governor's car and burned it.

Mouhsen spoke to reporters after returning to his office following the attack and said the gunmen who shot at him were not members of his own Fatah organisation or from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is a Fatah offshoot.

Earlier, a senior security official said he thought the attackers might have been aggrieved militants aligned with Fatah who had escaped from a Palestinian jail where they had been held in custody as part of an amnesty agreement with Israel.

Mouhsen declined to name the group he held responsible for the shooting, but security officials who declined to be named, said that the attackers were Islamic Jihad gunmen. (Reporting by Atef Saad; Writing by Ori Lewis)

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