AMMAN, 2 March 2006 — A security official said yesterday that Jordan has foiled an Al-Qaeda-linked suicide attack on “a vital civilian installation” and arrested a Libyan and two Iraqis.
“The intelligence services have managed to foil a terrorist suicide attack which a terrorist group that belongs to Al-Qaeda planned to carry out against a vital civilian installation,” state television quoted him as saying.
A Libyan and two Iraqis were arrested and the Jordanian authorities are trying to track down a Gulf national and three Iraqis who took part in the plot and who apparently fled to a neighboring country, the report said.
“The intelligence services seized four kilograms (8.8 pounds) of heavy explosives,” the security official said, according to a statement read on state television.
It said that the explosives were of the same kind used in the Nov. 9 triple hotel bombings in Amman that killed 60 people and which were claimed by the Al-Qaeda in Iraq group of Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
Jordan arrested Iraqi would-be suicide bomber Sajida Al-Rishawi after the attacks and in a dramatic television confession, the woman said her husband blew himself up in one of the hotels but she was unable to trigger her bomb. Television showed pictures of the three men who were arrested in connection with the plot and identified them as Libyan national Mohammed Saeed Al-Dorsi, 25, and Iraqi nationals Mohsen Al-Lussi, 34, and Abdel Karim Jumeili, 48.
— With input from agencies
