The incident occurred in a commercial cargo area where Jordanian trucks unload goods entering the occupied West Bank.
Israel has closed all border crossings with Jordan after a gunman killed three border policemen at the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan.
The Israeli military said the attacker arrived at the border crossing from the nearby town of al-Karameh in Jordan in a truck on Sunday morning and opened fire on border guards.
“Three Israeli civilians were reported dead as a result of the attack,” the army said, later telling AFP news agency that they were “working as security guards” and were not part of the army or police force.
Private security guards monitor the crossing alongside Israeli security forces stationed there.
The Israeli army said it had “eliminated” the attacker.
It was the first such attack along the border with Jordan since Israel began its war on Gaza in October.
The attack took place in an Israeli-controlled commercial cargo zone where Jordanian trucks unload goods entering the occupied West Bank, officials said.
The Israeli military said the truck driver “got out of the truck and opened fire on Israeli security forces operating on the bridge.” It added that an investigation was underway to determine whether the truck was rigged with explosives.
Jordan’s interior minister said authorities in Amman were “investigating the incident.” A Jordanian security source told AFP that the Jordanian side of the border crossing had been closed.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the West Bank, said the fact that the incident occurred in such an area “where a perpetrator managed to get a gun inside and kill three people is considered a very serious security breach.”
The shootings came days after Israeli forces withdrew from the West Bank city of Jenin after 10 days of deadly raids that destroyed homes, roads and water facilities. More than 30 Palestinians were killed. Israel has killed more than 600 people and arrested 10,000 others in its stepped-up operations in the West Bank since October.
Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, has drawn international condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
Highly militarized passage
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Ibrahim said the Israeli military and all other security services are there to ensure the crossing is “highly militarized” and that Palestinians “can be searched and inspected up to five times.”
The crossing is the only option for Palestinians to move from the occupied West Bank to Jordan.
Ibrahim said that under the 1993 Oslo Accords that established the Palestinian Authority, “there was supposed to be a kind of double patrol between the Palestinians and the Israelis” on the border, adding that this arrangement was in place for a few years before the Israelis took over the Palestinian side.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, said there had been “no confirmation or denial” about the identity of the truck driver from Jordanian authorities.
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 and maintain close security ties.
Dozens of trailers cross the border from Jordan every day, carrying goods from Jordan and the Gulf that supply both the occupied West Bank and Israeli markets.
