Two British-Israeli sisters killed in a shooting in the occupied West Bank have been named as Maya and Rina Dee.
The sisters were killed on Friday afternoon near the Hamra Junction in the north of the Jordan Valley, as they drove to Tiberias.
Their mother, Leah, remains in a critical condition in hospital, local media reported.
Their car was driven off the road after being shot at by gunmen.
Their father, who the BBC has been told is a well-known rabbi, had been driving ahead in a separate vehicle.
The family, originally from London, lived in the settlement of Efrat and were immigrants from the UK, the mayor said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described the incident as a terror attack, sent his condolences to the family in a tweet naming the sisters.
Also on Friday, an Italian tourist was killed and seven other people were wounded, including three Britons, in a suspected car-ramming attack in Tel Aviv.
Both incidents took place hours after Israeli warplanes carried out air strikes in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip on targets belonging to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The military said the strikes were a response to a barrage of 34 rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Thursday, which it blamed on the group.
That rocket barrage from Lebanon followed two nights of Israeli police raids at the al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, which caused anger across the region.
Hamas did not claim it was behind the shooting of the British-Israeli women but praised it as “a natural response to [Israel’s] ongoing crimes against the al-Aqsa mosque and its barbaric aggression against Lebanon and the steadfast Gaza”.
After the two sisters were shot, Israel Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai called on all Israelis with firearms licences to start carrying their weapons.
Responding to the news of the sisters’ deaths on Friday, the UK Foreign Office said: “We are saddened to hear about the deaths of two British-Israeli citizens and the serious injuries sustained by a third individual.”
Source – BBC News
Leave a Reply