(Adds Islamic Jihad comment)

JERUSALEM, Aug 27 (Reuters) - An Israeli soldier who took a wrong turn into a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank on Monday was returned unharmed by Palestinian security forces in a new sign of cooperation with Israel.

The Israeli army said the soldier inadvertently drove into the town of Jenin, considered a militant stronghold by Israel since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000.

He was picked up by Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas and escorted back to an Israeli position, the army said.

"Don't anyone shoot him. Don't anyone touch him," one security man shouted at a crowd that had gathered as he and other plainclothes officers led the uniformed soldier into a taxi so he could be driven to safety.

The Islamic Jihad militant group, however, said it had "abducted the soldier who had sneaked into the city", but its fighters were "surprised by members of the Preventive Security Service who surrounded them and took him".

An army spokeswoman in Tel Aviv, in comments that stopped short of denying the soldier had been seized by Islamic Jihad, said the military was unaware of any such occurrence.

A crowd in the city overturned and torched the soldier's abandoned car, tearing pieces of metal off the vehicle after a fire truck doused the flames, television footage showed.

The Israeli military and Abbas's forces have restored a measure of security cooperation since Hamas Islamists routed fighters from his Fatah faction and took over the Gaza Strip in June.

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