Jordan says intelligence officers killed in refugee camp attack

Government says five dead in attack on intelligence services office at Baqa’a camp near Amman
Five people have been killed in an attack on an office of Jordan’s intelligence services at a refugee camp near the capital, Amman.

People on a street in the Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan.

The incident, rare in Jordan, was confirmed by the country’s minister of media affairs, Mohammed al-Momani, who said it took place at an office in the Baqa’a refugee camp just before 7am (4am GMT) on Monday morning.

He gave no details of the attack but said it was carried out by those with the “criminal behaviour of people who are outside of our religion”.

Three intelligence officers, a guard and a receptionist were killed, Momani said.

A former Jordanian minister of information, Samih al-Maaytah, told the Al Arabiya news channel: “This attack was obviously deliberate. Whoever is responsible [wanted to show] that they are present in Jordan and are capable of carrying [out] attacks.”
The Baqa’a camp is home to around 100,000 people. It is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan and was set up in 1968 after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Earlier this year a large security operation was mounted in the northern city of Irbid in which several Islamic State sympathisers were killed in a shootout.
Momani also told Hala Akbar, an army radio station, that the attack on the first day of Ramadan represented a clear deviation from the Islamic faith.

He said Jordanians stood together in confronting attempts to harm their security forces and that these attacks would only increase the cohesion of Jordanians in fighting “evil forces”.
Jordan has carried out airstrikes against Isis in both Iraq and Syria.

One of its pilots was captured by the extremists when his plane went down in Syria in December 2014. Isis later released gruesome footage of him being burned alive.

Jordan has also opened up the Prince Hassan airbase, north-east of the capital, to other members of the US-led coalition taking part in the air war.
In March, Jordanian authorities announced they had foiled an Isis plot to carry out attacks in the kingdom in an operation that led to the deaths of seven extremists.


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