Israeli Air Strike in Gaza Kills Senior Aid Official, Gunman Kills Three at West Bank Crossing
A targeted air strike on the northern part of Gaza has claimed the life of Mohammed Morsi, a civil defense official of Gaza, and four of his kith and kin—the attack aimed at Morsi’s home in the Jabaliya refugee area at the outskirts of the Gaza Strip. The civil defense group that deals with fire situations and rescue operations of trapped civilians verified his death from the bombing.
On the same day, a man with a gunshot three Israeli private security guards dead on the Allenby Bridge border between Jordan and the West Bank. In response, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that the perpetrator, a Jordanian truck driver, fired at the guards’ after alighting from his truck when he got to the West Bank. Israel has since shut down three of the border points with Jordan and surrounded the neighboring city of Jericho for fear more gunmen had slipped into the West Bank. The interior ministry of Jordan will be conducting an inquiry into the shooting incident.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted to the attack by identifying the gunman as a “terrorist” and connecting the violence with what the Prime Minister called “a murderous ideology led by Iran’s axis of evil”.
This comes as the conflict between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas-run authority continues for the 12th month. The health ministry in Gaza said that they had received a report that 40,972 Palestinians were killed and 94,761 injured in the conflict so far. The war is said to have started following Hamas’s attack on the southern part of Israel, where they attacked a bus and killed approximately 1200 Israeli people.
There have also been increased army operations, settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israeli settlers and security forces in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian death toll that resulted from the uprising last year was 650, while Israelis who died in similar circumstances were 12, six of them in the previous eight days.
Attempts in trying to negotiate a truce between Hamas and Israel, in which the US, Egypt, and Qatar have ventured to do so, have proven to be quite enigmatic. The primary issue of disagreement in the negotiation process concerns the question of whether Israel would continue patrolling the strip in strategic areas of the strip’s border with Egypt. And to date, Hamas as well as Israel still vehemently accuse one another of being responsible for the stagnated negotiations. There will be an updated solution from the USA’s side shortly. However, given the current scenario, the chances of an agreement seem doubtful due to the existing gap between the representatives.
Meanwhile, the United Nations and local health officials have said it will take another day to complete a vaccination campaign against polio in the Gaza Strip. The campaign, which started in the southern area of the region, targets 640,000 children to contain polio after it was found in Gza for 25 years. Sporadic ceasefires in the fighting have enabled healthcare practitioners to administer vaccines to more than 50 percent of targeted children. Immunization for the second round will be administered four weeks after the last immunization.
