2 killed in West Bank after Israel strikes Lebanon, Gaza

This escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict following violence over Jerusalem’s most sensitive site.

Israel conducted rare airstrikes in Lebanon and continued bombarding the Gaza Strip on Friday, an escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict following violence over Jerusalem’s most sensitive site.

With tensions running high across Israel and the region, an alleged Palestinian shooting attack near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank killed two women in their 20s and seriously wounded a 45-year-old, Israeli medics said. The attack, coming after weeks of unusually heightened unrest in the West Bank, suggested that the recent tensions in Jerusalem could be spilling over to the occupied territory.

Even as quiet returned to Israel's northern and southern borders, the early morning Israeli strikes on Lebanon — which analysts described as the most serious border violence since Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants — threatened to push the confrontation into a new phase. Israeli strikes came in retaliation for a major barrage of rockets from Lebanon the day before, after Israeli police raids at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem spiraled into unrest and sparked outrage across the Arab world.

Although the Israeli military was quick to emphasize that its warplanes struck sites belonging to only Palestinian militant groups, the barrage risks drawing in Israel’s bitter foe Hezbollah, which holds sway over much of southern Lebanon and has in the past portrayed itself as a defender of the Palestinians and the contested city of Jerusalem.

During a lull in cross-border airstrikes and rocket fire, at least one Palestinian driving in the Jordan Valley allegedly opened fire on a car of three women, killing two of them, the Israeli military said. Medics said they dragged the unconscious women from their smashed car that appeared to have been pushed off the road.

The Israeli military said it was searching for those behind the attack, setting up roadblocks in the area. No militant group immediately claimed responsibility. But Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem hailed the attack “in retaliation for the crimes committed by Israel in the Al-Aqsa mosque and the West Bank.”

Earlier, Israeli missiles struck an open field in the southern Lebanese town of Qalili, near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, according to an Associated Press photographer and residents, killing several sheep and inflicting minor injuries on residents, including Syrian refugees. Other strikes hit a small bridge and power transformer in the nearby town of Maaliya and damaged an irrigation system providing water to orchards in the area.