‘Terror attack’ kills 5 Jordanian intelligence agents

AMMAN — Five Jordanian intelligence agents were killed in a “terrorist attack” on their office in a Palestinian refugee camp north of the capital Amman on Monday, the government said. Jordan is a leading member of the US-led coalition fighting Daesh (the so-called IS) group in neighboring Iraq and Syria and has been the target of militant attacks in the past. “The intelligence agency office in the Al-Baqaa camp was the target of a cowardly attack shortly before 7:00 a.m. (0400 GMT) today that left five agents dead,” government spokesman Mohammed Momani said. Momani said security forces were investigating who was responsible for the “terrorist attack” on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Jordan has seen spillover from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria in the past. In December 2005, suicide attacks on three Amman hotels claimed by Daesh’s predecessor Al-Qaeda in Iraq killed 60 people and wounded dozens. The Baqaa camp, where Monday’s attack took place, is 20 km from the center of Amman and the largest of the kingdom’s 10 official Palestinian refugee camps. It hosts around 100,000 of Jordan’s 2 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom fled from the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israel’s capture of the territory’s during the Six-Day War of 1967. Baqaa suffers from chronic poverty and high unemployment. It was the home of Mahmud Abdelal, an extremist who blew himself up in Syria in October 2012. In 2010, three Jordanian extremists were sentenced to prison terms of between three years and life for plotting to kill intelligence officers in the camp, a court official said at the time. — AFP