(Allenby Bridge) Three Israeli security guards were killed Sunday when a truck driver opened fire at the Israeli-controlled crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, the Israeli army said, as it continues its relentless offensive against the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The attack took place at the Allenby crossing, the only access to the outside world for Palestinians in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The perpetrator was “a Jordanian citizen” identified as Maher Diab Hussein Al-Jazi, the Jordanian Interior Ministry said. He was transporting goods from Jordan to the West Bank, the source said.
According to the Israeli army, “the terrorist approached the Allenby Bridge area from Jordan in a truck, got out and opened fire on Israeli security forces operating on the bridge.”
PHOTO AMMAR AWAD, REUTERS
A Jordanian security source said following the attack that the crossing, the only access to the outside world for Palestinians in the West Bank, had been “closed until further notice.”
Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, confirmed the deaths of three men aged around 50 in the attack.
The three were Israeli security guards, the army said.
The attacker was killed, the army and police said, without specifying his identity.
“This is a difficult day. A despicable terrorist murdered three of our citizens in cold blood on the Allenby Bridge,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Israeli operations
Hamas, which is at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip, welcomed the attack but did not claim responsibility. The Palestinian group said in a statement that the shooting illustrated “the Arab peoples’ rejection of the occupation.” [israélienne]of his crimes and his ambitions in Palestine and Jordan.”
Thousands of people pass through the crossing point, which is located in Palestinian territory but controlled by Israel, every day. It has been “closed until further notice,” according to a Jordanian security source.
This terminal had already been targeted in January 1998 by a suicide attack which resulted in the death of several people.
Sunday’s attack comes as Israel has stepped up large-scale military operations in the West Bank in recent weeks, where violence has flared since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israel on October 7.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 662 Palestinians have been killed there since that date, while at least 23 Israelis, including soldiers and police officers, have died there in Palestinian attacks or during military operations, according to official Israeli data.
In the Gaza Strip, where the war entered its 12th phase on Saturday,e Last month, the civil defense announced the death of a dozen people in Israeli air strikes on Sunday.
The Israeli military said it had struck about “25 Hamas targets” in the past 24 hours.
PHOTO OMAR AL-QATTAA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Buildings were heavily damaged in a camp housing people displaced by the conflict in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, September 8, 2024.
“Tired”
On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, 33 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
Israel has vowed to destroy the Palestinian movement that seized power in Gaza in 2007 and is considered a terrorist movement by the United States and the European Union.
Israeli retaliation has left 40,972 people dead in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry. The majority of the dead are women and children, according to the UN.
And the war has plunged the besieged Palestinian territory into a humanitarian disaster, with the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people displaced.
“Moving from one area to another is difficult and there is no safe place in Gaza,” said Raeed Hamad, 51, a cancer patient from the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
In Deir al-Balah (Center), Omm Mohammed Wadi wants “serious negotiations.”
“We want them to stop the war. Enough! We are tired. Our clothes are worn out, our children are sick and they all have scabies,” she says.
Despite multiple attempts by international mediators – the United States, Qatar and Egypt – and pressure to obtain a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages, the belligerents remain inflexible and accuse each other of blocking any agreement.
PHOTO AMMAR AMMAR, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on a target between the villages of Ghandourieh and Froun in southern Lebanon, September 6, 2024.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with his troops in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday where he reiterated his commitment to eliminating Hamas, according to a statement from his office.
He added that the army was also preparing in northern Israel, where there are almost daily exchanges of fire with Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.
At least five dead in Israeli strikes on central Syria
At least five people were killed on Sunday evening, Syrian state media reported, in Israeli strikes targeting military sites in central Syria, including a research center, according to an NGO.
Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes there, particularly targeting pro-Iranian groups.
“The number of victims of the Israeli aggression on several sites near Masyaf stands at five dead and 19 wounded, some of them seriously,” said the director of the Masyaf government hospital, Faisal Haidar, in comments reported by the Syrian official agency SANA.
“At around 23:20 (16:20 Eastern Time) on Sunday, the Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression from northwest Lebanon, targeting a number of military sites in the central region,” Sana said, citing a military source. “Our air defense shot down some missiles,” the source added.
“Thirteen violent explosions rang out in the area housing scientific research centers in Masyaf, where pro-Iranian groups and weapons development experts are present,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.