Senior Gaza rescue service official, four family members killed in Israeli air strike

An Israeli air strike in northern Gaza has killed a senior aid official and four members of his family on the same day that a gunman killed three Israeli security guards at the crossing between Jordan and the West Bank.
Gaza’s civil defence group, which fights fires and rescues people trapped in rubble, said its deputy director for northern Gaza, Mohammed Morsi, had been killed in an air strike. The organisation said the bombing of Mr Morsi’s house in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, northeast of Gaza City, also killed four members of his family.
On the same day, the Israel Defence Forces said three private security guards at the Allenby Bridge crossing had been shot dead by a truck driver arriving in the West Bank from Jordan.
The driver “exited the truck and opened fire at Israeli security forces operating at the bridge”, a military statement said, adding that three Israeli civilians had been pronounced dead as a result of the attack.
Israel closed all three of its land border crossings with Jordan and the Israeli army was also reported to have cordoned off the West Bank city of Jericho, which is close to the Allenby Bridge crossing, in case other would-be attackers had already entered. Jordan’s interior ministry announced it was also opening an investigation into the shooting.
Israel’s prime minister, Binymain Netanyahu, described the gunman as “an abhorrent terrorist”.
“We are surrounded by a murderous ideology led by Iran’s axis of evil,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement issued at the start of a cabinet meeting.
There has been asurge of violence in the West Bank, involving army raids on Palestinian towns, frequent and increasing attacks by Israeli settlers, and in recent days there has been a sharp rise in attacks on Israeli settlers and security forces, including two car bombs and one attempted car bombing.
The increasing bloodshed on the West Bank comes as the Gaza war enters its 12th month. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Sunday that 40,972 Palestinian are known to have been killed and 94,761 wounded. The conflict was triggered by a surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed.
Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, 650 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank amid army raids and settler attacks. About 12 Israelis have died in fighting or attacks on the West Bank over the same period, six of them in the past eight days.
The US, Egypt and Qatar have been trying to broker a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel for several months but negotiations are mired, mostly in a dispute over whether. or for how long, Israel can keep a residual force in a strategic corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Israel and Hamas continued to blame one another for the failure of mediators to broker a ceasefire. The United States is preparing to present a new proposal, but the prospects of a breakthrough appear dim as gaps between the sides’ positions remain large.
On Sunday the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, extended by a day a campaign to vaccinate children in the southern Gaza Strip against polio before it moves on Monday to the north.
The campaign aims to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after its first polio case in around 25 years. Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the campaign to proceed.
UN officials said they were making progress, having reached more than half of the children needing the drops in the first two stages in the southern and central Gaza Strip. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first – Agencies