Two young British sisters were shot dead and their mother was critically wounded in the West Bank last night when a Palestinian militant opened fire near a Jewish settlement.
he two sisters, one reportedly 15 and the other in her 20s, were shot in the Jordan Valley according to Oded Revivi, the mayor of Efrat. It is understood the shooting took place close to the settlement of Hamra.
Mr Revivi said the family were migrants from the UK, originally from London, and that they were travelling via the Jordan Valley to Tiberius, located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, for a holiday when the attack happened. According to Israeli media reports, 22 bullet casings were found on the ground.
In a post on Facebook, Mr 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 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.”
The mother was being operated on last night, and before sundown the family’s friends gathered in Efrat to hold a vigil.
In response to the attack, the Israeli military reinforced brigades across the West Bank and also called up an unspecified number of air force reservists, such as fighter jets and air defence crews.
The attack was particularly horrific as it took place during the Jewish holiday of Passover, which this year is coinciding with Easter and Ramadan.
According to Daniella Crankshaw, the co-founder of Centre Stage, the first professional English theatre in Israel, the women’s car was chased off the road into a ditch. Images posted on social media showed blood on the car, which had a number of bullet holes.
Ms Crankshaw wrote on Twitter: “The terrorist chased the women off the road into a ditch while shooting at them and shot at them at close range. Two young women in their 20s were murdered and another woman around 45 was critically injured. Truly sickening.”
Tensions in Israel are already extremely high after Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip launched multiple waves of rockets at Israel this week, in protest at scenes of Palestinian Muslims being beaten by police inside Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, such as Efrat and Hamra, are considered by many countries, including Britain, as illegal under international law, though Israel strongly disputes this.
Last night, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, vowed to find the killers in a joint statement with Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, stressing it was “only a matter of time, but not a lot of time”.
General Yehuda Fox, who oversees the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank, said: “This is an extremely severe attack. We’ll settle the score with these terrorists too, we’re hunting them and will catch them.”
Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, said last night:
“Two sisters, pure souls, caught in a heinous and shocking murder. May their memory be blessed.”
The president added: “I hug the father and the family in a painful condolence hug. Together with the people of Israel I pray for the mother’s healing and good news.”
No group immediately took responsibility for the attack on the sisters, but a spokesman for the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip praised it as “a natural response to the occupation’s ongoing crimes against al-Aqsa mosque and its barbaric aggression against Lebanon and the steadfast Gaza”.
The attack came just hours after Israeli warplanes hit targets through the night on Thursday, after Palestinian militants launched a barrage of rockets from Lebanon. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2023)