According to the Israeli military and medical personnel, a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank has resulted in the deaths of two Israeli women and the severe injury of another.
The women were in a vehicle that crashed after being fired upon near the Jordan Valley settlement of Hamra.
According to local media, the deceased women were sisters in their twenties. The third woman, reportedly their mother aged 48, is in critical condition.
The military stated that its forces had “begun pursuing the terrorists.
The gunfire occurred hours after Israeli aircraft launched airstrikes against southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The military stated that the strikes were in retaliation for the largest missile attack on Israel from Lebanon in the past 17 years, which it blamed on the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The rocket attack followed two nights of Israeli police assaults on the al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. Which infuriated the entire region.
The Israeli military initially portrayed Friday’s Jordan Valley incident as a Palestinian-Israeli car crash. When soldiers arrived, however, they discovered multiple bullet holes in the Israeli vehicle and determined that an attack had occurred.
The Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported that 22 cartridge casings from a Kalashnikov assault rifle were discovered.
United Hatzalah paramedics reported finding three critically injured patients.
“Along with other first responders, I performed CPR on the injured to save their lives,” said Oded Shabbat. One injured individual was flown by helicopter to the hospital for further treatment.
The settlement council of Efrat, south of Jerusalem, identified the three people as a mother and her daughters on Facebook. It added that identifying them was not yet permitted.
The mayor, Oded Revivi, was also quoted in the Israeli media as saying that the sisters’ father was traveling ahead of them in a separate vehicle when their vehicle was attacked. According to reports, he turned around and arrived at the site to find his wife and daughters being treated by emergency personnel.
The director of the Israeli military’s Central Command, which oversees the West Bank, referred to it as an “extremely severe terrorist attack” and assured that his troops knew how to locate the perpetrators.
“We are bolstering personnel in every sector. “We were unable to prevent this attack,” Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs said.
Meanwhile, Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai urged all Israelis with firearms permits to begin transporting their weapons.
“This murderous attack reminds us of the pervasiveness of terrorism in its many forms,” he stated.
Hamas did not claim responsibility for the attack, but lauded it as a “natural response to [Israel’s] ongoing crimes against the al-Aqsa mosque and its barbaric aggression against Lebanon and the resolute Gaza Strip.”
Since the beginning of this year, the level of violence between Israel and the Palestinians has increased.
Israeli forces have slain over 90 Palestinians, including both militants and civilians. If those responsible for Friday’s shooting are confirmed to be Palestinian. Then 17 Israelis and one Ukrainian have been slain in Palestinian attacks, all of them civilians except an Israeli paramilitary police officer.
