Jordan arrests Aqaba attack suspect

Jordan has arrested a Syrian accused of involvement in last week’s rocket attack on US warships in the Red Sea port of Aqaba.

Three rockets targeted US warships in the Red Sea port

The attack was allegedly carried out by an Iraq-based group, Jordan’s state television said.

 

Three of the attackers escaped over the border into Iraq on Friday – the day of the attack – using forged Iraqi passports, the television said on Monday, quoting a government spokesman.

The television did not name the Iraq-based group purported to have carried out the attack, in which the rockets missed the US warships but killed a Jordanian soldier.

Security sources have said the attack bore the hallmarks of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

The government statement, read on state television, said the suspect, Muhammad Hasan Abd Allah al-Sihly, plotted and carried out the attack along with two of his sons and an Iraqi.

Al-Sihly, who lives in Amman, had been surveying sites for the attack in Aqaba since 6 August, the statement said. He was joined by his two sons – Abd Allah and Abd al-Rahman – and Muhammad Hamid Husain, the Iraqi, in “carrying out the heinous crime”.

Husain, also known as Abu Mukhtar, was the leader of the Iraq-based group, the announcement said.  

Source: News Agencies