AMMAN, 21 August 2005 — Jordan yesterday vowed to stamp out terrorism in the kingdom despite Friday’s rocket attacks at the Red Sea port of Aqaba that targeted Jordanian, US and Israeli interests. The attack killed one Jordanian soldier and wounded another.
“This cowardly act will not prevent the government from carrying on with plans to combat terrorism in all its forms,” an official was quoted as saying by the state-run Petra news agency.
The official made the remarks after an emergency Cabinet session that discussed the outcome of ongoing investigations into the attack. The official said the government was “following with extreme interest the outcome of investigations” into Friday’s attacks.
Interior Minister Awni Yirfas said security forces had found the launcher used to fire the three rockets. Police found four more rockets when they seized the launcher in a warehouse in an industrial zone on a hillside overlooking Aqaba, state TV reported. The four rockets were defused.
Earlier, security sources said they were looking for a number of people who held Egyptian, Iraqi and Syrian passports. They said a number of Jordanian and other Arab nationals had been arrested although a direct link between them and the Aqaba attack “has not been established yet.”
An Al-Qaeda-linked group calling itself Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack on an Internet site. But Hutheifa, son of Abdullah Azzam, dissociated himself from the group members, saying they were using his father’s name as “cosmetics for their ugly deeds.”
“I don’t have any links or contacts whatever with this group, which also has nothing to do with Islam or my father’s ideology of jihad,” Hutheifa said in an interview with the Al-Rai newspaper.
“They are merely seeking a cover-up for their ugly deeds and decided to use the name of my father, who never sanctioned any acts of killings against innocent people,” he added.
Azzam, a Jordanian scholar of Islamic law, was killed in battles against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in 1989.
Jordan’s State Security Court is currently trying scores of suspects who belong to several networks, charged with plots to launch attacks against Jordanian, US and Israeli targets inside the kingdom.
