Last Updated: April 08, 2023, 03:11 IST
A member of Israeli security force detains a Palestinian man at the Al-Aqsa compound, while tension arises during clashes with Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 5. (Image: Reuters)
Tensions have escalated in the region after Israel was attacked with multiple waves of rockets this week, following clashes inside al-Aqsa mosque
Two British-Israeli sisters were shot dead and their mother was seriously injured in the West Bank on Friday when a militant attacked them near a Jewish settlement, The Telegraph reported.
The sisters, who were holders of British passports, were traveling through the Jordan Valley to Tiberius for a holiday when the attack happened, the report said.
The two sisters, one reportedly 15 and the other in her 20s, were shot as they drove through the Jordan Valley, hours after Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and Lebanon on Thursday night.
Two Israeli sisters were murdered in a shooting attack by a Palestinian terrorist.Their mother was critically injured .
There are no words to describe this kind of evil.
May their memory be a blessing.
— Israel ישראל (@Israel) April 7, 2023
Tensions have escalated in the region after Israel was attacked with multiple waves of rockets this week, following clashes inside al-Aqsa mosque.
No group immediately took responsibility for the attack so far.
Efrat mayor Oded Revivi confirmed the deceased were Israeli sisters and the wounded woman was their mother.
A British diplomat later confirmed that the two also held UK passports, while calling for “all parties… to de-escalate tensions”, according to AFP.
In a Facebook post, Revivi said, “With great sorrow we received an update on a shocking terrorist attack in which terrorists shot a car including a mother and her two daughters, residents of Efrat. The two girls were murdered and the mother is in critical condition and we all pray for her quick recovery.”
“The father of the family who drove in another car from the front turned around and witnessed the efforts to take care of his wife and daughters,” he added.
Meanwhile, Israel’s army has launched a manhunt for the perpetrators of Friday’s shooting in the West Bank which killed two sisters and seriously wounded their mother.
The army said the victims were fired on as their vehicle passed through Hamra junction in the northern part of the Jordan Valley.
Friday’s attacks came after Israel launched air strikes and an artillery bombardment before dawn in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
Israel “struck targets, including terror infrastructures, belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation in southern Lebanon”, according to the army.
Prior to that, Israeli riot police had stormed the prayer hall of Al-Aqsa mosque in a pre-dawn Wednesday raid aiming to dislodge “law-breaking youths and masked agitators” they said had barricaded themselves inside.
The violence sparked an exchange of rockets and air strikes with militants in Gaza. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meanwhile has urged “all actors to exercise maximum restraint”.
(With agency inputs)
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