A Jordanian truck driver opened fire on three Israeli guards at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, killing them, in the latest sign that the nearly year-old Gaza conflict is spreading violence across the region.
On the same day, an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza killed a senior aid agency official and two women and two children from his family.
The shooting on the West Bank border happened Sunday at Allenby Bridge over the Jordan River, also known as King Hussein Bridge.
“Terrorists approached the area from Jordan in a truck near Allenby Bridge, got out of the truck and opened fire on Israeli security forces operating on the bridge,” the Israeli military said.
“The terrorists were eliminated by security forces and three Israeli civilians were announced as a result of the attack.”
Jordan said it had launched an investigation into the three shootings and closed border crossings. Family members said the shooter was a 39-year-old truck driver from southern Jordan's powerful Huwaitat tribe.
Israeli reports said the shooting took place at close range in the commercial area of the border crossing, where trucks from Jordan and Gulf countries unload their cargo for transport to the occupied West Bank and Israel. The border has been largely quiet since Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.
In the Gaza Strip, the civil defense group, which is fighting fires and rescuing people trapped under rubble, said Mohammed Mursi, its deputy director for the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, was killed in an airstrike. It said four members of Mursi's family were also killed in the bombing of his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp, northeast of Gaza City. There was no immediate comment from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Israel said it had closed all three of its land border crossings with Jordan, and Israeli forces have also reportedly sealed off the West Bank city of Jericho, near the Allenby Bridge crossing, in case other attackers had already entered the country.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the shooter as an “abominable terrorist.”
“We are surrounded by murderous ideology led by Iran's axis of evil,” he said in a statement at the start of the cabinet meeting.
Violence has been on the rise in the West Bank, with military raids on Palestinian towns and more frequent and increased attacks by Israeli settlers. There has also been a sharp increase in the number of attacks against Israeli settlers and security forces in recent days, including two car bombs and one attempted car bomb.
Bloodshed in the West Bank is rising as the Gaza war enters its 12th month, with the Palestinian death toll approaching an estimated 41,000. The conflict began with a Hamas surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that left around 1,200 Israelis dead.
Since the start of the Gaza war, 650 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in military raids and settler attacks. Around a dozen Israelis have been killed in fighting and attacks in the area in the same period, six of them in the past eight days.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have been trying for months to broker a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, but talks have stalled, mainly over disputes over whether and for how long Israel can maintain remnants of forces in the strategic corridor along the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt.
