Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of two British-Israeli sisters killed in a shooting in the occupied West Bank.
Maia Dee and Rina Dee were killed on Friday in the north of the Jordan Valley as they drove to Tiberias for a family holiday.
Their mother, Lucianne, 45, remains in a critical condition in hospital.
Photo: EPA
Their father, Rabbi Leo Dee, embraced their bodies while mourners sang songs of grief at their packed funeral on Sunday, the BBC reported.
Maia was 20 years old and had been volunteering for national service in a high school, while Rina was 16, reports said.
Their car was driven off the road after being shot at by gunners in an incident which has been described as a terror attack. Their father had been driving ahead in a separate vehicle.
Speaking to the BBC, he described his daughters as beautiful, smart and popular.
Maia was “wonderful, beautiful, had a lot of friends ... she was very keen to do a second year of volunteering,” he said, adding that Rina was “beautiful, fun, very smart, top grades in every subject, very popular with friends, sporty ... very responsible.”
The family live in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, having reportedly moved from London eight years ago.
The funeral was held at the nearby settlement of Kfar Etzion.
Leo Dee, who served as a rabbi in UK synagogues in Hendon, London and Radlett, Hertfordshire, said he was proud of his three remaining children.
“We are a smaller family, but we are stronger from it and we will get through this,” he said.
The attack came after Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Tensions have been heightened by police raids at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque during the rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter.
Settlements in the occupied territories are considered illegal under international law, which Israel disputes.
Hours after the sisters were killed, an Italian tourist was killed when a car plowed into a group in a shoreline park in Tel Aviv.
Britons were said to be among five people injured in the attack.
On Saturday, Israeli troops shot dead a 20-year-old Palestinian man in the West Bank, Agence France-Presse reported.
The Israeli army said soldiers shot at suspects who threw an “explosive device” toward them, while the Palestinian health ministry said the man suffered bullet wounds to the chest and abdomen.
Hundreds turned out to attend his funeral on Sunday.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS