Mother of victims also seriously injured as Israeli prime minister vows revenge amid escalating violence in Middle East
Two British sisters were shot dead and their mother seriously wounded in the West Bank on Friday when a Palestinian militant opened fire near a Jewish settlement.
The sisters, one reportedly 15 and the other in her 20s, were shot as they drove through the Jordan Valley in an apparent revenge attack that came just hours after Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza and Lebanon on Thursday night.
Tensions in Israel have soared since 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.
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 family had emigrated from the UK, and were originally from London. They were travelling through the Jordan Valley to Tiberius, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, for a holiday when the attack happened, according to Oded Revivi, the mayor of Efrat, where they lived.
It is understood the shooting took place close to the settlement of Hamra. 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.”