AMMAN ø Jordan killed three suspects in an Al Qaida plot to launch a chemical weapons attack against
government installations.
The insurgents died during in a four-hour siege by security forces in
Amman on Tuesday. The insurgents were described as foreigners, but
their nationalities were not reported. Another three suspects were captured.
A police statement said security forces raided an insurgency hideout in
eastern Amman, Middle East Newsline reported. An official said the security force targeted insurgents
linked to an Al Qaida-aligned group that had plotted to use CW against
government installations.
"Information made available to security authorities pointed to the
presence of an armed group which had plotted to carry out terror attacks,"
the police statement said. "The gunmen were ordered to surrender but they
opened fire on the security forces who returned fire, killing all three."
The Al Qaida targets were also said to have included the embassies of
Israel and the United States. The plot was said to have been directed by Abu
Mussib Al Zarqawi, a Jordanian national and regarded as the most lethal Al
Qaida-aligned insurgent in Iraq.
One of the insurgents captured was said to have been Abdul Al Fatah Al
Jayusi. Al Jayusi was one of three insurgents who escaped capture in raids
by Jordanian security forces earlier this month, in which three truckloads
of weapons, ammunition and CW components were seized in northern Jordan.
The trucks were said to have come from Syria.
Witnesses said the force that raided the insurgency hideout in the
Palestinian neighborhood of Amman on Tuesday appeared to have been a special
operations unit. The officers, who surrounded the house at 1 p.m. local
time, were equipped with commando assault rifles, body armor and gas masks.
The insurgents opened fire on the Jordanian force and one officer was
wounded, the witnesses said. They said one of those captured spoke Arabic
with an Iraqi accent.