two Israeli women killed in West Bank car attack

Two Israeli women were killed on Friday, April 7, in the occupied West Bank, in an attack on their vehicle, after Israeli strikes against the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon. According to the Israeli army, their vehicle was attacked in the north-eastern West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967. It announced that it had blocked the roads in the area and launched a search to find the “terrorists” who shot at the vehicle.

This attack is the latest episode in a sudden rise in tension in the Middle East. It comes after Israeli strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, launched after a relative lull in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict observed since the start of Ramadan on March 23. These strikes constitute an escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese front unparalleled since 2006. The airstrikes began shortly before midnight in Gaza and lasted several hours, and the bombardments on southern Lebanon, brief, took place around 3 a.m. .

In Lebanon, the Israeli army claimed to have struck three “infrastructure” belonging to Hamas, in the Rashidiyah area, where there is a Palestinian refugee camp, near Tyre. This is the first time that Israel has confirmed that it has attacked Lebanese territory since April 2022. On Thursday, the day of Passover, around 30 rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israel, injuring one person and causing material damage. These shootings took place the day after the violent irruption, Wednesday, of the Israeli police in the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site of Islam, in order to dislodge Palestinians.