By Apps Support,Stephen Quillen
Copyright aljazeera
An assailant has killed two Israeli soldiers at the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank, according to Israel’s national ambulance service.
The men, aged about 20 and 60, were wounded on Thursday at the Israel-controlled crossing and later pronounced dead, the service said in a statement.
Israel’s military said the attacker was travelling in a humanitarian aid truck from Jordan and began shooting. Security forces returned fire and “neutralised” the assailant, the military added. Israeli media reports suggested the perpetrator may have used a knife to stab the victims after his gun malfunctioned.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Jordanian foreign ministry said the attacker was a Jordanian national wh had been delivering aid to Gaza for three months.
After the attack, Israeli forces conducted searches in the area and “encircled” the nearby West Bank town of Jericho, the military said.
Jordan’s government-run Petra news agency reported passenger traffic had been suspended at the crossing “after its closure from the other side”.
The Israeli foreign ministry blamed the attack on Jordan, saying it was “yet another result of the vile incitement in Jordan”.
Following the attack, Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir recommended the country halt the entry of humanitarian aid from Jordan, pending an investigation and revised security protocols for Jordanian drivers, the military said in a statement.
Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned the attack as a “violation of international law”.
The King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge, a vital trade crossing between Jordan and Israel, was previously the site of an attack in September 2024 when a gunman from Jordan killed three Israeli border workers. The crossing was subsequently closed for two days.
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Doha, described the crossing as a “highly secured place” and said the latest attack raises questions about how an armed assailant managed to get through “unnoticed”.
She added that the bridge is the only crossing through which most Palestinians may travel abroad because they are unable to travel from Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport and are not allowed by Israel to build an airport in the West Bank or Gaza.
