AMMAN, 20 August 2005 — Terrorists yesterday attacked US Navy ships docked at the Red Sea port of Aqaba, but three Katyusha rockets they fired missed their intended targets and instead killed a Jordanian soldier and injured another.
“Preliminary investigations indicate that one of the three rockets hit a store belonging to the Jordanian armed forces, killing one soldier and injuring another,” an official spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.
The other two shells hit a military hospital in Aqaba and the adjacent Israeli port of Eilat, the unidentified Jordanian official said.
“The three rockets were fired from a store in Aqaba that was rented a few days ago by four people who carried Iraqi and Egyptian passports,” he added.
An Al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for the attack. The claim of responsibility was issued in an Internet posting by the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which also claimed to have carried out the July 23 bombings in the Egyptian report of Sharm El-Sheik, about 200 km (120 miles) southwest of Aqaba on the southern tip of Sinai, which killed at least 64 people. “A group of our holy warriors... targeted a gathering of American military ships docking in Aqaba port,” said the statement, which also threatened to topple King Abdallah of Jordan.
Two American amphibious assault ships were docked at Aqaba’s port, to the south of the city, when the rockets were fired toward them, the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said. One rocket sailed over the bow of the USS Ashland at about 8:44 a.m., Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown said. The rocket smashed into the roof of a nearby Jordanian military warehouse that the US military was using to store goods bound for Iraq. The blast killed the Jordanian soldier and wounded another.
The Ashland and the second vessel, the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge, sailed out of port as a precaution after the attacks, Brown said. No American sailors or Marines were injured.
The vessels, which are based in Norfolk, Virginia, and had arrived at Aqaba earlier this week carrying members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit for exercises with the Jordanian military. It was not clear how many Americans were on board at the time of the attack. The Ashland has a crew of 400 and can carry up to 500 Marines, and the Kearsarge a crew of more than 1,100 sailors and can carry almost 1,900 Marines.
“We condemn all such attacks,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, who is with the vacationing President George W. Bush at Crawford, Texas. “We are investigating the matter and will cooperate with local Jordanian officials on the attacks.”
Jordan has been the scene over the past two years for several abortive attempts by hard-line elements affiliated with Al-Qaeda who planned to launch attacks against government, US and Israeli targets.
The State Security Court is currently trying at least seven networks grouping scores of suspected terrorists, who planned to carry out attacks inside the country.
