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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Aqaba attackers may have been Zark's boyz |
| 2005-08-20 |
| A rocket attack Friday morning missed two U.S. Navy vessels docked at this Red Sea port city, killing one Jordanian soldier and hitting the nearby Israeli town of Eilat. The assault raised fears that militants tied to Iraq's insurgency were operating in Jordan. Three Katyusha rockets were fired from an industrial zone on the outskirts of town, authorities said, apparently targeting U.S. warships that docked here last week, the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge and the landing ship USS Ashland. The first rocket sailed over the bow of the Ashland at 8:44 a.m. and hit a warehouse near the Kearsarge, killing a Jordanian soldier, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain. The vessels left port shortly after the attack, the first against U.S. warships since the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen five years ago. Another rocket exploded near an airport in neighboring Eilat, about 10 miles away, hitting a stretch of road and wounding a taxi driver. A third rocket landed in an open lot at a nearby military hospital, causing little damage. Within hours of the attack, the Jordanian army started an intensive search for four men, two Egyptians and two Iraqis who recently rented a workshop from which the rockets were fired, Jordanian television reported Friday afternoon. A fifth suspect, thought to be a Syrian who guarded the shop, was also said to be sought. Because of the style of the attack and the possible involvement of Iraqis, it stoked growing fear within this country that insurgents may be operating on Jordanian soil. Katyusha rockets are crude rockets prone to poor accuracy, but they are capable of significant damage. They are a hallmark of insurgent groups in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Although militants have been caught with weapons seeking to cross into the West Bank over the years, there has not been such an attack on Jordanian soil in recent memory. A group calling itself the Brigades of the Martyr Abdullah Azzam claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks in an Internet posting, saying the United States had "corrupted the Earth" and that the Jordanian "devil" had to stop jailing Muslim scholars, according to the SITE Institute, a group based in Washington that tracks terrorist messages on the Internet. The attack on Friday raised serious concerns in Jordan, which until now has generally been able to keep the violence in neighboring Iraq and the West Bank at bay. That militants were able to smuggle rockets into Jordan, or manufacture them here, and fire them undetected in one of the most secure cities in the country, has shaken security officials. "Jordan's relative advantage for decades has been stability," said Mohammad Momani, professor of political science at Yarmouk University. "Although there was not much collateral damage from this attack, symbolically this is very damaging to Jordan's reputation. And it may indicate a spillover of the American war in Iraq." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Fired three times at these bog ol ships and didn't come near hitting the targets... BRRRRAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! |
| Posted by: RG 2005-08-20 20:49 |