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The Israeli military said on Sunday that three Israelis were killed after a gunman opened fire on security forces at the border crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank.
The shooting was the first incident on the border between Jordan and the West Bank since the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza erupted last year, raising tensions across the Middle East.
The Israeli military said the gunman approached the Allenby Bridge, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, in a truck from the Jordanian side, before opening fire on Israeli forces operating at the bridge.
Three Israeli civilians were killed in the attack, according to the military. All three dead were men in their 50s, the Israeli ambulance service said. The attacker was shot dead by Israeli forces.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack, and the Israeli airport authority said both the Allenby Bridge – the only route connecting the West Bank and Jordan – as well as land border crossings between Israel and Jordan would be closed until further notice.
The Israeli military said its forces were inspecting the truck to ensure it was not rigged with explosives, while Jordan’s interior ministry said it had opened an investigation into the shooting.
Israeli forces also closed the northern and southern entrances to Jericho, the West Bank city closest to the Allenby crossing, and were conducting vehicle checks, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Jordan became the second Arab country after Egypt to establish diplomatic relations with Israel when the two signed a peace treaty in 1994. The kingdom cooperates with the country on security issues, such as as part of an international coalition to help Israel fight a Iran missile attack earlier this year.
However, the soaring Palestinian death toll in the Gaza war, sparked by Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7, has strained relations between the two countries. Jordan, which has a large Palestinian population, has led protests against the war.
Jordan’s King Abdullah has condemned the Hamas offensive, in which the militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took about 250 hostage, according to Israeli figures.
But officials in Amman have also been fiercely critical of the devastation caused by Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza, which has so far killed more than 40,800 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and sparked a humanitarian crisis in the coastal enclave.
Earlier this year, King Abdullah’s son, Crown Prince Hussein, condemned the international community’s failure to stop the fighting and accused the Israeli government of “escalating the situation in the West Bank and trying to drag the region into a regional war”.
Tensions in the West Bank have been rising since the beginning of
The war in Gaza, and last week the Israeli military launched its biggest operation in the occupied territory in years.
