AMMAN, 22 August 2005 — Jordan has detained scores of Arab suspects as part of the investigation into a rocket attack on US warships in the Red Sea port of Aqaba, security officials said yesterday.
Most of the suspects were arrested in the Shalala quarter of the Red Sea port that overlooks the port during house-to-house searches following Friday’s attack, the officials said.
Jordanian Interior Minister Awni Yarfas said the suspects arrested over the past two days were being questioned.
He did not elaborate on the number and nationalities of detainees, but the pro-government newspaper Al-Rai quoted security sources as saying that about 30 men belonging to the Jordanian, Iraqi, Egyptian and Syrian nationalities had been arrested.
He said security forces were making headway in the probe into the firing of three Katyusha rockets that missed their targets but hit Jordanian facilities in the city, killing one soldier and injuring another.
“The authorities have made advanced progress in their work,” Yarfas told Reuters, without giving any details. The Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet said one missile narrowly missed the USS Ashland, an amphibious ship designed to transport marines and launch assault landing craft and helicopters.
Security sources said several Iraqis, a Syrian and scores of Egyptians and Jordanians were among those detained in the poor Shalala area, known as a hotbed of crime and a hide-out for smugglers and cross border drug trading.
Police sources said a number of unused Katyushas were also found in the warehouse in the industrial area near the city center from where investigators say the rockets were launched. The authorities had earlier said the warehouse was leased a few days before the Friday attack by Iraqis and Egyptians.
One Jordanian security official told Reuters that while they have not conclusively established who ultimately sponsored the attacks several new leads point to Al-Qaeda network. He did not elaborate.
The militant network has been blamed in recent years for several plots to attack Western targets and government installations in Jordan.
The source said they had in recent months received several warnings that Aqaba port, a logistics hub and a main supply facility for US forces in Iraq, was a prime target for a planned Al-Qaeda attack.
