Two killed by gunman at Israeli-run crossing between West Bank and Jordan

18 Sep 2025, 20:25 by Jane Moore, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/jane-moore/ · TheJournal.ie

LAST UPDATE | 6 hrs ago

A GUNMAN HAS killed two people at an Israeli-run border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, officials said.

The Israeli military referred to it as a militant attack and said that the shooter arrived on a truck transporting humanitarian aid.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said that two men, around 60 and 20-years-old, were wounded in the attack at the Allenby Bridge crossing and received initial treatment at the scene before being pronounced dead.

The military said the attacker had been “neutralised” without elaborating.

Israel’s foreign ministry has said that the assailant was Jordanian. “This is yet another result of the vile incitement in Jordan. This is the result of the echoing of Hamas’s campaign of lies. This must stop,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Jordan has condemned the attack and said authorities “have begun an investigation into the shooting incident that occurred this afternoon on the other side of the King Hussein bridge (Allenby)”.

The kingdom’s foreign ministry said Jordan considered the attack “a threat to the kingdom’s interests and its ability to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip”.

Separately, the Israeli military said four more soldiers were killed in the southern Gaza Strip, and that a drone had struck in the area of the southern Israeli city of Eilat.

Three Israelis were killed in a September 2024 attack at the crossing, when a retired Jordanian soldier opened fire.

That attack appeared to be linked to Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.

The Allenby crossing in the Jordan Valley is the only international gateway for Palestinians from the West Bank that does not require entering Israel.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war, with more than 700,000 Israelis now living in the occupied territories. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state.

In July, the UN warned that mass displacement in the West Bank had hit levels not seen since the start of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory nearly 60 years ago.

Violence in the West Bank has surged since the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel recently approved a controversial settlement project in the West Bank. E1, a roughly 12 square kilometre open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades – but was frozen due to US pressure during previous administrations.

The location of E1 is significant because it is one of the last geographical links between Ramallah, in the northern West Bank, and Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.

The project would effectively cut the West Bank in two, with Palestinians and rights groups saying could destroy plans for a future Palestinian state.

Gaza

Meanwhile, Israel is currently waging a major ground offensive in Gaza City that has forced over 200,000 Palestinians to flee, according to the UN.

Israeli tanks and warplanes pounded the city today, prompting long lines of scared Palestinian civilians to flee as the military intensified its assault on the territory’s largest urban hub.

Thick columns of smoke billowed into the sky as AFP journalists and witnesses saw a steady stream of Gazans heading south on foot, in vehicles and on donkey carts – their meagre belongings piled high.

“There is artillery fire, air strikes, quadcopter and drone gunfire. The bombing never stops,” said Aya Ahmed, 32, sheltering with 13 relatives in Gaza City.

“The world doesn’t understand what is happening. They (Israel) want us to evacuate south – but where will we live? There are no tents, no transport, no money.”