Jordan bombers 'are Iraqis'
2005-11-11 17:32
Amman - Al-Qaeda said on Friday that four Iraqis, including a husband-and-wife team, carried out the suicide bombings against luxury hotels in Jordan that devastated one of Washington's staunchest Middle East allies.
The triple hotel blasts on Wednesday night that killed at least 57 people and injured nearly 100, were claimed by a group headed by Iraq's al-Qaeda frontman, the fugitive Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The group said: "The group charged with planning, preparing and implementing the attacks was made up of three men: commanders Abu Khabib, Abu Muaz and Abu Omaira. Their fourth was the venerable sister Om Omaira.
"Om Omaira chose to follow her husband Abu Omaira on the path of martyrdom."
Jordanians mourn victims
United Nations chief Kofi Annan condemned the attacks during a visit to Amman as Jordanians gathered in mosques nationwide to mourn victims of the carnage, which jolted a country regarded as one of the safest in the volatile Middle East.
Annan said: "No ideology can justify the killing of innocent people."
A family friend said the death toll rose to 57 after Hollywood film director Mustafa Akkad, a Syrian and US national who produced the Halloween series of horror movies, died of injuries.
Deputy prime minister Marwan Moasher said 12 people, some of them Jordanian, had been arrested and were considered suspects in connection with the attacks.
17 victims at wedding reception
According to a Jordanian official, hundreds of people of differing nationalities had been detained for questioning since the blasts, but many had since been released.
At least 12 foreigners were reported to have been killed in the blasts, which ripped through hotels frequented by foreign residents and Westerners travelling to neighbouring Iraq. At least 17 of the victims were at a wedding reception.
A senior Jordanian official said security staff at two of the hotels, the Grand Hyatt and Days Inn, said they had spoken to two of the suspected assailants just before the bombings.
The official said: "They were curious about the way they were dressed."
Spirited display of unity
Jordanians packed mosques for special noon-time prayers for the dead and several thousand people staged a march and rally - called by trade unions and opposition parties such as the Moslem Brotherhood - in a spirited display of unity.
A 20-year-old university student, Abdullah Abu Rumman, said: "This has united the Jordanian people - do you see all these Jordanian flags everywhere?
"We forget everything about our origins - Palestinians, Jordanians, Arabs. We're all together now."
About half the Jordanian population was of Palestinian origin.
King Abdullah 2 attended prayers at al-Hashimiyah mosque, where the imam denounced the perpetrators of Wednesday's bomb attacks as "ignorants" whose "actions are totally banned by Islam".
- AFP