Three Israelis were shot dead Sunday at the border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, officials said.
The army said the gunman approached the Allenby Bridge from the Jordanian side in a truck and opened fire on Israeli security forces, who then returned fire, killing the assailant.
The three people killed were Israeli civilians. Israeli rescue services Magen David Adom told The Associated Press that they were three men in their 50s.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He condemned the attack and linked it to Israel’s broader conflict with Iran and allied militant groups.
“This is a difficult day,” he said. “A despicable terrorist murdered three of our fellow citizens in cold blood at the Allenby Bridge.”
Mahmoud Illéan / AP
Meanwhile, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri welcomed the attack, calling it a response to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
“We expect many more similar actions,” he said, according to Reuters.
Jordanian authorities said they were investigating the shooting, the state-funded Petra news agency reported. The Arab country, a Western ally, made peace with Israel in 1994 but is highly critical of its policies toward the Palestinians.
The Allenby Bridge, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, is used primarily by Israelis, Palestinians and international tourists. Israeli and Jordanian authorities said the crossing was closed until further notice, and Israel later announced the closure of its two land crossings with Jordan, near Beit Shean in the north and Eilat in the south.
The Israeli-occupied West Bank has seen a surge in violence since the Hamas attack on Gaza on October 7 sparked war in the region. Israel has launched near-daily military raids on densely populated Palestinian residential areas, and there has also been a surge in settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Magen David Adom/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images
Friday, Aysenur Eygi, a Turkish-American national, was shot dead by Israeli forces in the West Bank while participating in a pro-Palestinian protest against settlement expansion in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank, near the town of Beita.
THE The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement: that troops operating near Beita had “responded with fire against one of the main instigators of the violent activity who had thrown stones at the forces and posed a threat to them.”
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories the Palestinians claim for their future state, in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but retained control of its airspace, coastline and most land crossings. Along with Egypt, it imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.
Attacks continue in Gaza
Meanwhile, in Gaza, an Israeli airstrike killed five people early Sunday, including two women, two children and a senior civil defense official – first responders operating under the umbrella of the Hamas-led government.
The Civil Defense said the strike targeted the home of its deputy director for northern Gaza, Mohammed Morsi, in the Jabaliya urban refugee camp.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment. It said it was trying to avoid harming civilians and was targeting only militants.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the warThe count makes no distinction between combatants and civilians. The war has caused enormous destruction and displaced nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their October 7 attack in southern Israel. They kidnapped another 250 and are still holding about 100 after freeing most of the others in exchange for Palestinians jailed by Israel during a weeklong ceasefire last November. About a third of the remaining hostages in Gaza are believed to be dead.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been trying for months to negotiate a ceasefire and the return of the hostages, but negotiations have repeatedly failed.
