Two British sisters were killed and their mother wounded in a shooting in the West Bank | Palestinian territories

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Two British sisters have been killed and their mother seriously wounded in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank, keeping the region on edge even as the situation on Israel’s borders appears to have improved after Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip overnight.

Israeli media reported that the two sisters were killed when their car crashed after being shot at in the northern Strip on Friday. Local authorities said they were 16 and 20 years old, and their mother was 48. The family’s names have yet to be officially released due to a halt to some Israeli police procedures on the Jewish holy Sabbath, Shabbat.

The mayor of the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat in the West Bank, where the family lives, said they immigrated from the UK and that the sisters’ father was driving ahead of them in another car when their car was attacked.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are saddened to hear of the killing of two British Israeli nationals and the serious injury of a third person. The UK calls on all parties across the region to de-escalate tensions.”

The Israeli army launched a search for the suspects in the area.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which rules the besieged Gaza Strip, praised the shooting but did not claim responsibility. The Israeli police commissioner called on citizens who hold a license to carry weapons to start carrying their weapons after the attack.

The attack near the Hamra settlement in the Jordan Valley comes against a backdrop of fears of a broader escalation in the Middle East drawing in the powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah. Those fears came to a head in the early hours of Friday morning, after Israel bombed sites in Gaza and Lebanon in retaliation for rocket fire it blamed on Palestinian militants from the two regions.

About 34 rockets – the largest barrage of rockets from Lebanon towards Israel since the 2006 war with Hezbollah – sounded alarm bells in the north of the country. Most of them were intercepted, but two people were injured.

In the south, an exchange of fire erupted across the border with Gaza since dawn on Wednesday, after 12 Palestinians were injured and hundreds arrested in an Israeli police raid on the Al-Aqsa holy compound in Jerusalem. The police said in a statement that the officers were forced to storm the chapel after what it described as masked agitators barricaded themselves inside.

Video footage of police beating Palestinian worshipers with batons and rifle butts at Islam’s third-holiest site during Ramadan was met with widespread anger across the Muslim world and calls for calm during the sensitive holiday period from the United Nations and the White House. A similar incident occurred early Thursday, again triggering a barrage from Gaza. A house in the Israeli town of Sderot and several alleged military sites in the Strip were damaged back and forth.

While Israel remained on high alert on Friday, the packed midday prayers at Al-Aqsa, which is also revered in Judaism as the Temple Mount, passed largely without incident. The lack of casualties in the border confrontations also indicates that both sides were content with small-scale attacks.

“Quiet will be answered with calm,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hecht, an IDF spokesman, while a Hamas official said they would maintain calm if Israel did the same, with the movement “making its point clear.”

Hezbollah, the Shiite group that helps Israel’s arch-enemy Iran project its power across the region, has faced intense attacks by Israel in Syrian territory over the past week, hitting what Israel believes are drone manufacturing sites. At least two members of the organization were killed.

The movement vowed to respond, but, like Hamas, it remains wary of escalation. The violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque could have provided a pretext for revenge.

Although Israel said Hamas was behind the attack from Lebanon, which took place while its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was visiting Beirut, it is widely believed that Hezbollah must have given the move the green light. Palestinian groups operate in the south of the country with the knowledge of the Shiite movement.

Israeli air and artillery strikes killed a flock of sheep near the Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, and also hit a bridge, electrical transformers and damaged an irrigation network, in the first cross-border attack on Lebanese targets recognized by Israel. in a year.

And in Gaza, Israeli shelling hit what the army said were Hamas weapons production sites and underground tunnels. The Palestinian Health Ministry said a children’s hospital in Gaza City had been damaged.

The violence during the holy month of Ramadan and the start of the Jewish Passover holiday comes after the bloodiest start to the year in Israel and the occupied West Bank since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the first decade of the 21st century. About 90 Palestinians, about half of them combatants, have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year, according to human rights groups’ tallies. Palestinian “lone wolf” attacks killed 16 Israelis, all but one of them civilians.

This week’s events echo 2021, when clashes at Al-Aqsa during Ramadan helped start an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, and serve as a reminder of how quickly a wider conflagration could ignite.

Israel also faces political chaos since the most right-wing government in the country’s history came to power at the end of last year. The massive protests against coalition plans to limit the powers of the Supreme Court involved large numbers of Army reservists, raising concerns about operational readiness.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly fired his defense minister two weeks ago for declaring his opposition to judicial reform, but has not followed through with the required formal written notification. Other enemies of Iran and Israel are watching closely what they see as a moment of domestic vulnerability that can be exploited.

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