Terrorist injures a retired HCJB World Radio missionary and his daughter.

Israel (HCJB)–Retired HCJB World Radio missionary Gustavo Molina and his daughter Kathy were among five Ecuadorian tourists wounded Wednesday when a Jordanian terrorist opened fire on the group at a border crossing near Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat.

Border guards immediately shot back, killing the attacker. Although details are sketchy, the injuries to Molina and his daughter are not considered serious, and both are recovering in the Eilat hospital in southern Israel.

Patricia Teran, a member of La Republica Alliance Church in Quito, suffered the worst injuries and was airlifted to Beersheva for treatment of head wounds, reported El Comercio.

The five victims were part of a group of 29 Ecuadorian tourists from Quito and Guayaquil. They were on a tour of Jordan, Israel and Egypt.

Reuters reported that the rare incident of violence on the Israel-Jordan frontier broke out just before Palestinian leaders began talks in Gaza with militant factions on reaching a cease-fire with Israel to revive a U.S.-backed peace plan that has been stymied by persistence violence.

The gunman, a truck driver from the predominantly Palestinian city of Zarqa, Jordan, passed through the Jordanian border terminal outside the port of Aqaba and crouched among trucks lined up at the Israeli terminal before opening fire on tourists waiting ahead of them.

“The gunman . . . opened fire 20 yards from the entrance to the Israeli passport check,” Menachem Zelichovsky, from the Airport Authority which oversees Israel’s sensitive border crossings with Arab states, told Israel radio. “He hit five tourists before border guards shot back and killed him. It was all over very quickly.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the southern Israeli border zone, scarcely touched by more than three years of violence in a Palestinian uprising. Guerrilla-style border attacks on Israel launched from Egypt or Jordan have been rare since 1979 and 1994 peace accords were signed. But more than half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian descent and many opposed the normalization of relations.

Jordanian government spokeswoman Asma Khader told Associated Press, “Preliminary information indicates that this was an individual, not an organizational attack.”

Molina has served as a chaplain at HCJB World Radio’s Vozandes Hospital in Quito for more than 40 years — the last 34 year of those as a missionary. Although officially retired since August, he continues to volunteer at the hospital. His goal was to lead at least one patient Christ every day, and thousands responded to the Lord throughout his career.