Four people died today in a shooting on the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan near the Allenby Bridge border crossing. According to the Israeli army, three Israeli civilians and the attacker, who was shot dead by the armed forces, were killed. Israel closed its land border crossings with the Kingdom of Jordan after the incident, Reuters reports. The gunman was identified as a Jordanian citizen, Jordan’s interior ministry said.
According to the Israeli military, the attacker arrived at the Allenby Bridge from Jordan in a truck, got out and opened fire. “The terrorist was eliminated by the security forces, three Israeli civilians were declared dead as a result of the attack,” said the Israeli army, which later specified that the attacker had been shot dead.
According to Israel’s emergency services, three men in their 50s succumbed to their injuries when they were shot at one of the crossings between the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank and Jordan, AFP reports.
In response to the incident, Jordan closed the Allenby Bridge (King Hussein Bridge in Jordan) border crossing and will investigate the shooting, a Jordanian official told Reuters. The shooting took place in the Israeli-controlled goods transit zone, where trucks are unloading their cargo imported from Jordan. The border crossing is used by Palestinians, Israelis and foreign tourists, writes the AP agency.
It is the first attack of its kind on the Israel-Jordan border since October 7 last year, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a large-scale attack in southern Israel, to which the Israeli army responded with military action in the Gaza Strip, raising tensions throughout the region.
Gunmen from Hamas and other Palestinian groups killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to the Gaza Strip. Over 100 hostages were released during the week-long truce at the end of November, eight of them were freed by the Israeli army, and less than four dozen were brought to Israel dead by the army. Now, according to the military, around a hundred hostages remain in Gaza, of which at least 33 are dead.
Israel’s retaliation in the Gaza Strip claimed the lives of at least 40,972 people and injured more than 94,761, according to today’s statement by Hamas-run authorities. Much of Gaza has been destroyed since October, and the vast majority of its 2.3 million residents are surviving in very difficult conditions outside their homes.
Source: www.tyden.cz
