Jordan to boost Iraq border security

The plan was announced on Monday, 10 days after a Katyusha rocket, allegedly smuggled into the country from Iraq, was fired on and narrowly missed a US Navy ship in Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba.

A Jordanian soldier was killed when the rocket slammed into a nearby warehouse.

A second rocket exploded near a Jordanian hospital, and a third slammed into a taxi outside Eilat airport in neighbouring Israel but did not explode. The taxi driver was wounded.

Jordan has said three al-Qaida members, using the al-Karameh border crossing with Iraq, smuggled seven Katyusha rockets into the kingdom in the modified petrol tank of their Mercedes sedan. Four unfired rockets were found in the warehouse from which the attack was launched.

Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher, who is also the government spokesman, announced the increased border spending.

Monitoring

Muasher said that the workload at the crossing – ten times capacity at 1500 vehicles and 5000 passengers from Iraq daily – could have been a factor.

Muasher said computers at the al-Karameh crossing would be linked to a central system to monitor when and where travellers have entered or left the kingdom. He declined to provide other specifics.

He also said detection equipment was being upgraded.

“Authorities are also putting more X-ray equipment to carry out thorough searches on vehicles,” Muasher said.

After the Aqaba rocket attack, Jordanian police arrested Mohammed Hassan Abdullah al-Sihly, a Syrian citizen who lives in Amman.

Three others, including al-Sihly’s two sons and the alleged Iraqi leader of the al-Qaida-linked group, Mohammed Hamid Hussein, are thought to have fled to Iraq.

The three crossed al-Karameh border post into Jordan on 6 August.

Iraq’s government spokesman has promised that Baghdad would “do its best to arrest those people”.