Allenby crossing shooter buried in Jordan as Amman works to bring back detainees
Allenby crossing shooter buried in Jordan as Amman works to bring back detainees
Jordan says the body of the truck driver who shot dead three Israelis has been sent back to the kingdom, while Amman works on bringing detainees back as well
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Jordan said it received the body of Maher al-Jazi, the truck driver behind the rare attack [Getty/archive]
The Jordanian national who shot dead three Israeli guards earlier this month was laid to rest in the kingdom on Tuesday.
Maher al-Jazi's body was returned to his hometown of Al-Husainiya in southern Jordan, about 220 kilometres from the capital Amman earlier on the same day.
Videos shared online showed large crowds joining Jazi's funeral procession, as his coffin, draped in a Jordanian flag, was carried to his final resting place.
The truck driver carried out the rare attack on 8 September on the Israeli side of the the Allenby Crossing, nearly a year into the war on Gaza. Jazi was shot dead shortly after by Israeli soldiers.
"The body of Jordanian citizen Maher al-Jazi was received and will be buried in the kingdom after being handed over to his family," said foreign ministry spokesman Sufyan al-Qudah earlier Tuesday.
Amman is continuing its efforts to release remaining Jordanians detained by Israel following the attack, he said.
"The ministry, in coordination with the relevant authorities in the kingdom, continues its efforts to release Jordanian citizens Muslih al-Awdat and Hussein al-Naimat, who were detained as a result of the shooting incident that occurred on the Palestinian side of the King Hussein Bridge (Allenby Crossing), which is controlled by Israel, on September 8."
Both Jordan and Israel briefly closed the crossing after the shooting, the first such incident in the area since the 1990s.
The crossing, in the Jordan Valley, is the only international gateway for Palestinians from the occupied West Bank that does not require entering Israel, which has occupied the territory since 1967.
The West Bank has seen a spike in Israeli violence in the past year, with large-scale military raids and settler attacks, amid concerns that Israel’s focus could shift to the occupied territory once the war on Gaza begins to settle.
Jordan and Israel have shared ties since 1994, but their relations have strained since the start of the war on Gaza, where more than 41,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians.
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