ICC Note: Jordan, who hasn’t reported a terrorist attack since 2016, recently experienced an attack which targeted security forces and Christians. The attack occurred August 11th in the predominantly Christian town of Fuheis, killing one policeman and wounding six. Suspects were found located in a different city. The attack has raised grave concern that terrorists want to destabilize Jordan by targeting high-profile security and vulnerable civilian targets.
08/22/2018 Jordan (JCPA) – Over the past two years, Jordan has enjoyed relative quiet on the terror front. The last terror attack was at Karak Castle in southern Jordan in December 2016.
In that incident, the terrorists attacked Jordanian police officers and barricaded themselves inside the Crusader castle, taking 14 hostages including Malaysian tourists. Eventually, the terrorists were killed; a female tourist from Canada was also killed along with nine other people, mostly members of the security forces.
It now appears that the terrorists of radical jihadist Islam are again cropping up in Jordan for a new wave of attacks on the security establishment and that the aim is to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom. On August 11, 2018, an explosive device was planted in a Jordanian police vehicle in the town of Fuheis. The blast killed a policeman and wounded six others.
A quick investigation led to the terror gang’s hideout in a building in the city of Salt. The siege on the building lasted several hours. When the security forces tried to break into the building, the terrorists set off explosive devices they had planted in advance; the building collapsed on the terrorists and security forces.
In this incident, five members of the security forces were killed, including Major Majad al-Huwaitat, commander of the special-operations unit. Another 20 people were wounded, and three terrorists were taken alive.
The bodies of five other terrorists were found in the rubble of the building.
The investigation revealed that the terrorists were Jordanian citizens and not infiltrators from Syria or Iraq, even though numerous refugees live in Salt who came to Jordan during the Syrian Civil War.
The fact that this was a local terror infrastructure, heavily armed and operating professionally, is of great concern to Jordan’s ruling echelon.
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