The Qatar Red Crescent and the U.N. agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) signed an agreement on Sunday, with $4.5 million from a Qatari state development fund, to aid more than 4,400 stranded Palestinian workers and patients from Gaza in the West Bank.

”[The] cash assistance will represent vital support for those displaced who have not been able to return to the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Strip last October,” a statement from the Qatar’s state news agency said.

”Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation, stranded from their loved ones and livelihoods,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said.

Since Israel’s blockade of Gaza began in 2007, movement in and out of the Strip has been heavily restricted, forcing individuals to seek medical care, education, or jobs in the West Bank, while escalating violence often closes borders, trapping those in need of essential services.

Meanwhile, three Israelis were shot and killed Sunday at the border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, Israeli officials said, in what appeared to be an attack linked to the 11-month-old war in Gaza.

Israel’s military said the gunman approached the Allenby Bridge Crossing from the Jordanian side in a truck and opened fire at Israeli security forces, who killed him in a shootout. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said the three Israelis were all men in their 50s.

Relatives identified the gunman as Maher al-Jazi, a retired Jordanian soldier from Athroh, a town in the impoverished area of Maan.

Jordan is investigating the shooting, its state-run Petra News Agency reported. The Western-allied Arab country made peace with Israel in 1994 but is deeply critical of its policies toward the Palestinians. Jordan has a large Palestinian population and has seen mass protests against Israel over the war in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack and linked it to Israel’s larger conflict with Iran and allied militant groups, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli-occupied West Bank has seen a surge of violence since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza triggered the war there. Israel has launched near-daily military arrest raids into dense Palestinian residential areas, and there has been a rise in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Also on Sunday, loved ones mourned Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, an American-Turkish woman who was shot dead on Friday in the West Bank. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements there. The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” and called on Israel to investigate, while her family seeks an independent investigation. Her body remained at a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack. They abducted another 250 and are still holding around 100 after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. Around a third of the remaining hostages inside Gaza are believed to be dead.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months trying to broker a cease-fire and the return of the hostages, but the negotiations have repeatedly bogged down.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem — territories the Palestinians want for a future state — in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but maintained control over its airspace, coastline and most of its land crossings. Along with Egypt, it imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.

With inputs from agencies.