Five Jordanian security officials were killed when a gunman opened fire on their offices inside Jordan’s largest Palestinian refugee camp. The government called the assault “a terrorist attack” and on Monday night arrested a suspect. Initial investigations suggested the attack at the intelligence department’s office at the Baqaa camp was an “individual and isolated act”, Mohammad al-Momani, Jordanian government spokesman, said.
The attack took place on the first day of Ramadan and shook Jordan, a Western ally which has remained stable despite the chaos in neighbouring Iraq and Syria. Queen Rania of Jordan, the wife of King Abdullah, said: “At the beginning of Ramadan, the month of mercy and goodness, a vile terrorist act killed five of Jordan’s sons. We mourn them, they are the martyrs of duty.”
Three of the dead were agents with Jordan’s main security service, the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) known more commonly as the mukhabarat. A guard and a telephone operator were also killed, according to the government. A single gunman reportedly attacked the office in the Baqaa refugee camp with an automatic weapon shortly before 7am. It was not clear if Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) was behind the attack but Jordan is participating in the US-led bombing campaign against the jihadist group in Syria.
Last year, Isil released a horrifying video showing a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive after he was captured in Syria. Isil’s earlier incarnation, al-Qaeda in Iraq, was led by a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and in 2005 he ordered a squad of suicide bombers to strike Amman, Jordan’s capital.
