Israel army kills two attackers who crossed from Jordan

The Israeli military said its troops killed two armed assailants on Friday who had crossed into Israel from Jordan and lightly wounded two soldiers, in a rare attack in the border area.

"Two terrorists who crossed from Jordan into Israeli territory south of the Dead Sea were eliminated by IDF (army) soldiers," a military statement said, adding that a third attacker was thought to have fled the scene.

Two Israeli soldiers, one of whom was a reservist, were lightly wounded in an exchange of fire with the attackers, the army said, as forces were searching the area "due to the suspicion of the presence of an additional terrorist".

The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan later claimed the two killed attackers as members of their group.

The attackers were "members of the group and always participated in events in solidarity with Gaza and in support of the resistance", Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Moath al-Khawaldeh told AFP.

He named the two attackers as Hussam Abu Ghazaleh and Amer Qawoos.

Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has fought Israeli forces in Gaza since the October 7 attack last year that sparked the war in the territory, had called the attack from Jordan "a significant development in the ongoing battle".

The Qatar-based leadership of Hamas praised the shooting attack "targeting soldiers of the Zionist occupation army", adding in a statement that it "confirms" the continued Arab support for their cause.

It came just hours after Israel confirmed its forces in Gaza had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attack.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 42,500 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures issued by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry and acknowledged by the UN as reliable.

Jordan in 1994 became the second Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and their shared border has remained largely calm since then.

Last month, a Jordanian gunman killed three Israeli guards at Jordan's border crossing with the occupied West Bank -- the first such attack since the 1990s.