Explosions rock Jordan hotels

[Partridge]

At least 52 people have been killed and hundreds injured after three explosions hit major tourist hotels in the Jordanian capital Amman, officials said tonight.
The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1638667,00.html) & Agencies

Police said they believed that suicide bombers had carried out the attacks on the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn hotels which happened around 9pm (1900GMT) local time.

One of the explosions ripped through the Radisson hotel during a wedding party with at least 300 guests.

"We thought it was fireworks for the wedding but I saw people falling to the ground," said Ahmed, a wedding guest who did not give his surname. "I saw blood. There were people killed. It was ugly."At the Grand Hyatt, an American businessman said a bomb exploded in the lobby. "Several of my friends have died. The people who carried this out were cowards," he said, refusing to give his name.

Jordan's King Abdullah II condemned the attacks as "criminal acts committed by a deviant and misleading bunch" and said they would not sway Jordan from continuing its battle against terrorism. He cut short his official visit to Kazakhstan and was returning home tonight.

"The hand of justice will get to the criminals who targeted innocent secure civilians with their cowardly acts," he said in a statement carried by the Petra news agency.

All three hotels are popular with American and European businessmen and diplomats. The Radisson, in particular, is popular with Israeli tourists, and has been a target of foiled al-Qaida plots in the past.

[Partridge]

"criminal acts committed by a deviant and misleading bunch"

Thats a fantastic quote! So much better than 'evil-doers'.

[Partridge]

Al-Qaida group claims Jordan attacks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,1639339,00.html

The al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist organisation today claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks in Jordan, which killed at least 57 people last night. A statement, which has not been authenticated, was posted on a website used by militant groups and said Amman was targeted because it is the "backyard" for US operations.

The claim was signed in the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

The statement said Amman is "a backyard for the enemies of the faith, the Jews and crusaders...a filthy place for the traitors...and a centre for prostitution."

At least 57 people and more than 100 were wounded when suicide bombers targeted three hotels in the Jordanian capital.

The Grand Hyatt, Radisson and Days Inn hotels were said to be popular with foreigners and many of the guests were involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Bassel Tarawneh, a spokesman for the Jordanian government, said the victims included 15 Jordanians, one Saudi, one Palestinian, five Iraqis, three Chinese, one Indonesian and 30 others. Two Palestinian security officials and an Israeli-Arab are also believed to be among the dead.

An Iraqi government spokesman, Laith Kubba, said the attack should warn Jordan that it needed to stop playing host to former members of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"I hope that these attacks will wake up the 'Jordanian street' to end their sympathy with Saddam's remnants ... who exploit the freedom in this country to have a safe shelter to plot their criminal acts against Iraqis," said Mr Kubba.

Police held several people overnight, but it is not clear whether they are suspects or witnesses to the attacks. DNA tests are now being carried out to identify the suicide bombers, said police officials.

The attacks have been widely condemned by the international community.

The foreign secretary Jack Straw said Britain would give Jordan practical help to fight terrorism.

"Jordan's sorrow is our sorrow. Jordan's grief is our grief. Jordan's determination to fight this mindless terrorism is our determination as well," he said from Amman. Mr Straw is due to visit Iraq later today.

Last night, Tony Blair said he was shocked and saddened by the bombings in Jordan.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. We were deeply grateful for the support of the Jordanian government and people after the attacks in London in July and we stand together in this battle against the scourge of terrorism," said Mr Blair.

Police maintained tight security in the capital today, but land borders have now reopened since the attacks.

[Partridge]

Iraq restaurant bomb kills dozens

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4423836.stm
More than 30 people have been killed and at least 20 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack on a restaurant in Baghdad, Iraqi officials have said. Witnesses said the explosion in the city centre could be heard from several miles away.

The restaurant is popular with Iraqi police officers and security guards.

In a separate incident, at least six people were killed and 13 injured by a suicide car bomb in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.

In Baghdad, a man with explosives strapped to his body walked into a restaurant close to the Palestine Hotel in the city centre shortly before 1000 (0700 GMT) and blew himself up.

The BBC's correspondent there, Jim Muir, described the scene as utter carnage.

The bomb was not one of the biggest bombs yet seen in Baghdad, but it was particularly lethal because it exploded in a confined space, he said.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has claimed in a statement posted on the internet that it carried out the attack, Reuters reports.

"A lion from our martyrs' brigade embedded himself among the infidel police and security forces in the restaurant," said a statement on an Islamist website often used by the group.

A statement purporting to be from Al-Qaeda in Iraq had earlier said the group carried out the bomb attacks which killed at least 57 people in three hotels in Jordan's capital, Amman, on Wednesday.

Recruiting centre attacked


Only an hour after the Baghdad attack another suicide bomber drove his car into the middle of a group of men queuing at a Tikrit recruiting centre for the Iraqi army.

Capt Hakim al-Azawi told the Associated Press that the men were former army officers who had served under Saddam Hussein and who had recently been invited to re-enlist.

The armed forces were disbanded after the US-led invasion in 2003 - a move seen by many as an error as it created large numbers of unemployed, disaffected men.

The Iraqi government is trying to build up its security forces to replace the multinational troops, who are currently struggling to contain the insurgency ahead of December's parliamentary elections.

Iraqi security forces have been the frequent targets of attacks by insurgents.

[Partridge]

Scores dead in three Amman hotel bombings; Israelis evacuated before attack
Ha'aretz (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/643691.html)

Bombs rocked three hotels in Amman late last night, killing at least 57 people and wounding more than 115 in apparent suicide attacks. One of the hotels is known to be popular with Israeli tourists.

"There were three terrorist attacks on the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn hotels, and it is believed that the blasts were suicide bombings," police spokesman Major Bashir al-Da'aja told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

A police official said the attacks were simultaneous and hit minutes before 9 P.M. in two districts in the Jordanian capital, including the commercial area of Jebel Amman and Al-Rabiyeh, which houses the Israeli Embassy.

A number of Israelis staying yesterday at the Radisson SAS were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel.

The Foreign Ministry stated yesterday that no Israeli tourists are known to have been injured in the blasts. Representatives of Israel's embassy in Amman were I contact with local authorities to examine any report of injured Israelis, but none were received. There are often a number of Israeli businessman and tourists in Amman, including in the hotels hit yesterday.

Israel's counter-terror headquarters yesterday recommended Israeli citizens not travel in Jordan. Travel recommendations regarding Jordan were tightened a few months ago, but many Israelis still visit the country. Many also visit other regions such as the Jordanian Arava and the ancient city of Petra.

The first bomber, at 8:50 P.M. local time, struck the Grand Hyatt, completely shattering the stone entrance. An AP reporter saw at least seven bodies removed from the hotel and many more wounded carried out on stretchers.

CNN reported an eyewitness saying the Jordanian prime minister's car was at the Grand Hyatt at the time of the blast.

Police said a second explosion hit the nearby Radisson SAS hotel, where about 250 people were attending a wedding reception. At least five were killed and at least 20 wounded in that blast, believed to have been caused by a bomb placed in a false ceiling, police sources at the scene told Reuters.

The Radisson, in particular, is popular with Israeli tourists and was a target of several foiled Al-Qaida plots in the past.

Police also reported a third explosion at the Days Inn Hotel in Amman. There were also casualties at that hotel.

"The attacks carry the trademark of Al-Qaida," one police official said on condition of anonymity in line with police regulations. "However, it is not certain. We are investigating."

Ayman al-Safadi, editor of Jordan's Al-Ghad newspaper, told the Al-Arabiya satellite network that it was a "terrorist operation."

"Finally, the terrorists succeeded in breaking the security in Jordan," he said, referring to past success in foiling many terror plots.

Jordan's King Abdullah II condemned the attack, saying, "Justice will pursue the criminals" behind the Amman suicide attacks, CNN reported. Abdullah, who was on an official visit to Kazakhstan, cut short his trip and was returning home last night.

The Grand Hyatt and Radisson SAS hotels, in the commercial Jebel Amman district, are located about one kilometer apart and are frequented by American and European businessmen and diplomats. The Days Inn is located three kilometers away.

An American businessman who was at the Grand Hyatt when the explosion occurred said a "bomb that went off in the lobby." He declined to identify himself.

"It was a miracle that we made it out with a scratch," said a British guest at the Grand Hyatt.

"We thought it was fireworks for the wedding but I saw people falling to the ground," said Ahmed, a wedding guest at the Radisson who did not give his surname. "I saw blood. There were people killed. It was ugly."

Jordan, a key ally of both the United States and Israel, had largely escaped the terror attacks that have hit other parts of the Middle East, and its sleepy capital, Amman, is viewed as a haven of stability in the region.

But Jordan has not been entirely immune: On Aug. 19, militants fired three Katyusha rockets at a U.S. Navy ship docked at the Red Sea resort of Aqaba, narrowly missing it and killing a Jordanian soldier.

Jordanian officials blamed that attack on Al-Qaida in Iraq, and there have been growing worries that the violence in Iraq could spill over into Jordan, where many Iraqi exiles have taken refuge from the violence.

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(And just as quickly, it is denied....)

No truth to report of Israeli evacuations before Amman bombs

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/643661.html

There is no truth to reports that Israelis staying at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman on Wednesday were evacuated by Jordanian security forces before the bombing that took place there.

The Israelis were escorted back to Israel by Jordanian security personnel only after the attacks had taken place, contrary to earlier reports.

Al Qaida said Thursday that it had carried out the triple suicide bombings at the Radisson, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels in downtown Amman, in which at least 57 people, including an Israeli, were killed.

Representatives of Israel's embassy in Amman were in contact with local authorities to examine any report of injured Israelis, but none were received. There are often a number of Israeli businessman and tourists in Amman, including in the hotels hit Wednesday.

Israel's counter-terror headquarters on Wednesday recommended Israeli citizens not travel in Jordan. Travel warnings regarding Jordan were tightened a few months ago, but many Israelis still visit the country. Many also visit other regions such as the Jordanian Arava and the ancient city of Petra.

[jetsetlemming]

I saw on the news that only one of the deaths was an American.

[Partridge]

King has more friends in West than at home
By Robert Fisk (http://www.selvesandothers.org/view18.html)
It was a bloody, cruel message to the Plucky Little King Mark II. Help the Americans, train their Iraqi policemen, entertain their special forces officers and you will be a new target of al-Qa’ida. Not that new, of course. A US embassy employee, Laurence Foley, the softest of targets because he loved the Middle East and lived at home in Amman, was killed three years ago. But 56 dead, most of them Jordanians, is a devastating blow to the man who once ran the supposedly "elite" Jordanian special forces and who is King of that little sandpit Winston Churchill created and called "Jordan".

And who was to blame? Why Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of course. The same tiresome, odd, ruthless, nebulous Zarqawi who the Americans seem as little able to capture or kill as they do Osama bin Laden, or Mullah Omar, or, for that matter, Radovan Karadjic and Ratko Mladic, the war criminals who butchered the Muslims of Srebrenica and other cities in Bosnia.

The suicide bombings that killed 56 innocents in Amman bore in that cliche beloved of all journalists, "all the hallmarks" , of al-Qa’ida and Zarqawi. Why do we keep gifting these creatures with the attributes of silver?

If, that is, Zarqawi is alive. A petty criminal from the Jordanian city of Zarqa, he certainly existed in 2003 when the illegal invasion of Iraq was undertaken by the United States and Britain. But many in Iraq believe he died in the initial air attacks of that war. In Zarqa, his wife, of whom he was very possessive, has gone out to work to support her family. When his mother died last year, the family had no messages of condolence from Zarqawi, an odd omission from a man who has supposedly embraced so strict an interpretation of Islam.

Repeatedly, American intelligence officers have "identified" Zarqawi from videotapes depicting the murder of Western hostages. But the killers were always cowled in scarves, their voices distorted. How did the Americans know this was Zarqawi? There are many unanswered questions about al-Qaida’s role in Iraq - and now in Jordan - which we journalists now prefer to leave alone. Why Jordan? Why now?

Well, partly because King Abdullah is so loyal a servant of President George Bush. Partly because his forces are training Iraqi soldiers. Partly because he is allowing US special forces to train those soldiers on his soil. Partly because Jordan has also become a rear echelon air base for US fighter-bombers, which are attacking cities in Iraq. And partly because Jordan, with its unconstitutional monarchy and its growing slums of Islamists in its largest cities, is the soft underbelly of "the West" in the Middle East. Since the death of his father, Jordanians and other Arabs have been asking whether the King can justify his existence in what was once called Transjordan.

"What is the King for?" I was asked not long ago in Jordan. A dangerous question, and every act of violence against his kingdom makes the question more ominous. Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is as unpopular as ever inside the country. The Radisson Hotel, one of the targets of Wednesday night’s attacks, was often used by Israeli visitors to Jordan.

Because he is so popular in the West, because he speaks English better than he speaks Arabic, because he is the son of the Plucky Little King Mark I, King Hussein, because he was a graduate of Sandhurst, King Abdullah is a popular figure in Europe and America, welcome in Downing Street and the White House. But there are those in Jordan who do not wish him so well. Wednesday night’s attacks were a warning that the King might be safer in London than he is in Amman.