Israeli officials reported a gunman shot dead three people at the border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. In the meantime, an Israeli strike on Jabaliya killed Mohammad Morsi, deputy director of the Emergency Services in the northern Gaza Strip, and four of his family members.
The Israeli military said the gunman approached the Allenby Bridge from the Jordanian side in a lorry and opened fire on Israeli security forces, who subsequently killed the attacker in a firefight. In the attack, three Israeli citizens lost their lives. Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said they were all men in their 50s.
Jordan is investigating the shooting, state-run Petra News Agency reported. The country made peace with Israel in 1994 but is deeply critical of its policies toward Palestinians; in addition, Jordan has a large Palestinian population. It has seen massive protests against Israel over the war in Gaza. Violence has spiked in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since a 7 October Hamas attack from Gaza triggered the war there by launching a cross-border assault on southern Israel. Tel Aviv, in turn, has launched almost daily military arrest raids in densely populated Palestinian residential areas.
Sunday morning also saw an Israeli airstrike on Jabaliya that killed five people, including two women, two children and a senior member of the Civil Defence, a rapid reaction force operating under the Hamas-led government.
Mohammad Morsi, deputy director of the Civil Emergency Service in the northern Gaza Strip, and four members of his family were among the dead. The Civil Emergency Service said in a statement that the number of its members killed by Israeli fire since 7 October had risen to 83 following Morsi’s death.
Military action in Gaza has caused the deaths of more than 40,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. The war has resulted in massive destruction and displacement of about 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times. In addition, children in the region have suffered deprivation of education for the second year in a row due to the hostilities.
The United Nations, meanwhile, in co-operation with local health authorities, on Sunday extended for one day a polio vaccination campaign for children in the southern Gaza Strip before it moves to the north on Monday. The campaign aims to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after the first polio case in 25 years.
