Blasts a 'deep, painful wound'
2005-11-11 13:15
Amman - United Nations chief Kofi Annan was headed to Amman on Friday as Jordanians mourned victims of deadly attacks on three luxury hotels claimed by al-Qaeda which jolted one of Washington's staunchest Middle East allies.
Jordanian authorities were hunting down the perpetrators of Wednesday's suicide carnage, which devastated a kingdom regarded as one of the safest nations in the volatile region.
The death toll rose to 57 after renowned Hollywood film director Mustafa Akkad, a Syrian and United States national, died of injuries sustained in one of the hotel blasts, a family friend said.
More than 100 were hurt in the attacks, which targeted three luxury hotels frequented by foreign residents and Westerners travelling to neighbouring Iraq.
Blasts condemned
Mourners held special prayers for the dead at Husseini mosque in the capital to be followed by a protest march organised by Jordanian opposition parties and trade unions.
The blasts, the first suicide attacks on Jordanian territory, shattered the notion that Jordan might be invincible to terror strikes by opponents of the United States military campaign in Iraq.
The United Nations security council condemned the bombings "in the strongest possible terms". US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, currently in Iraq on a regional tour, said she too was ready to come to Jordan if she could be of assistance.
In Washington a US intelligence official said the claim of responsibility by al-Qaeda's Baraibn al-Malik Brigade was the strongest indication yet that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, is using Iraq as a base from which to expand his operations in the region.
Jordan will not be blackmailed
King Abdullah 2 vowed to catch those behind the bombings and said his country, only the second Arab nation to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, would not be "blackmailed" into changing its policies.
Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Moasher said Zarqawi was "certainly the prime suspect" and remains of the three bombers had been found but not yet identified.
Al-Dustur newspaper reported that the bomb at the Hyatt hotel appeared to have been homemade, packed with metallic pieces to ensure it did the greatest harm, and added that a leg of one of the bombers had been recovered.
Deep wound
President George W Bush and the British presidency of the European Union have expressed their horror at the bombing.
One bomber blew himself up in a ballroom as a wedding party was in full swing, killing the fathers of the bride and the groom and causing panic among the revellers.
Saeed Abu Hasna, chief of the intensive care unit at a UAE hospital, was knocked out of bed when the blast rocked his room directly above the ballroom.
"I ran down and saw bodies everywhere. Five of them were smoking. All of them were bloody," Abu Hasna said. "I will never forget this. It was a horrible, horrible scene."