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Jordan kills foreign suspects in chemical attack plot

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, April 22, 2004

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.


Copyright © 2004 East West Services, Inc.

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