Three Israelis Killed at Jordan-West Bank Border Station

(Bloomberg) -- A gunman killed three Israelis at a terminal on Jordan’s border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, the first such incident since the Gaza war began in October, straining ties between the Jewish state and the Hashemite kingdom.

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Israel’s army said that the gunman accessed the Allenby Bridge crossing, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, from the Jordanian side in a truck and fired shots before he was killed by Israeli guards. The victims were identified as forklift operators above the age of 50.

The crossing, which is used mainly by Palestinians and foreigners, was closed while Israeli security forces conducted searches given suspicions that the truck might have been rigged with explosives, the army said. Al Arabiya TV showed a backlog of trucks on the Jordanian side after the closing.

Jordan was investigating the incident, Al Mamlaka TV said.

As a precaution, Israel also shuttered the two terminals on its border with Jordan - the Jordan River/Sheikh Hussein crossing to the north, and the Yitzhak Rabin/Aqaba crossing to the south.

Pro-Palestinian sentiment is widespread in Jordan, and the government in Amman has been a vocal critic of Israel’s 11-month-old war in Gaza, launched in response to a cross-border rampage by Hamas militants. Israel has alleged that Hamas’ Iranian sponsors are trying to foment violence in the West Bank with weapons smuggled through Jordan.

“A despicable terrorist murdered three of our civilians in cold blood,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in televised remarks. “We are surrounded by a murderous ideology that is spearheaded up by Iran’s axis of evil.”

Hamas said in a statement that it welcomed the incident and described the shooter as heroic, adding that such attacks are a “confirmation of the Arab people’s rejection of the Occupation’s (Israel’s) crimes”.

--With assistance from Galit Altstein and Dana Khraiche.

(Updates Israel closing other border crossings from fifth paragraph.)

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