Jordanians Find Rocket Launcher Used in Attack on U.S. Ships

NY Times
Aug. 20, 2005

Jordanian authorities found the launcher that fired three Katyusha rockets from a hilltop warehouse, including one that narrowly missed a U.S. naval ship docked at this Red Sea resort, Jordan's Interior Minister Awni Yirfas said Saturday.

The most serious strike against the U.S. Navy since the USS Cole bombing in Yemen nearly five years ago killed a Jordanian soldier Friday, wounded another and sparked a nationwide manhunt for the culprits involved.

Two other rockets were fired toward Israel from the same warehouse, which is located in the hills on Aqaba's northern edge about 5 miles from the port. One fell short and hit the wall of a Jordanian military hospital and the other landed inside Israel close to Eilat airport, lightly wounding a taxi driver.

"We have found the rocket launcher in the warehouse from where they fired," Yirfas told The Associated Press in what marked one of the first key breakthroughs in the investigation.

"The investigation is still underway and issues related to it will remain secret so it would not harm the process," Yirfas said. "I cannot give you the names or say if we are looking for the perpetrators in the desert or any other place."

Jordanian security forces are hunting for six people, including one Syrian and several Egyptians and Iraqis, who are believed to have escaped in a vehicle with Kuwaiti license plates after firing the rockets.

An Al-Qaida-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, said in an Internet statement that it staged the attack, but the claim could not be authenticated. The same group was among several militant organizations that claimed responsibility for terror bombings in three Egyptian Sinai Peninsula resorts during the past year, which killed around 100 people.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, who is expected to return here on Saturday following a state visit to Russia, condemned Friday's attacks.

"This criminal attack will not deter Jordan from carrying out the true message of Islam which terrorists are trying to distort," Abdullah said in a statement carried by the state-run Petra news agency.

The rocket firings deepened concerns about new Islamic militant activity in a sleepy corner of the Middle East usually known for beach vacations and Israel-Arab peacemaking.

Until last year, the Red Sea area including Egypt's Sinai, had seen no violence, but since October the area has seen a string of attacks. These include the Egyptian resort bombings in Sharm el-Sheik and Taba and a recent roadside bomb blast in the northern Sinai that targeted a vehicle belonging to the Multinational Force and Observers, which is helping monitor the 1979 Egypt-Israeli peace deal.

One of Friday's rocket sailed over the USS Ashland's bow and hit a nearby Jordanian military warehouse that U.S. forces use to store goods bound for Iraq, killing one Jordanian soldier and wounding another. No Americans were injured.

The Ashland, an amphibious assault ship, had docked on Aug. 13 with the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge at Aqaba's port for joint exercises with Jordan's military. Both vessels left port after the attack as a precaution.

The rocket barrage was a startling attack in the usually sleepy tourist resort of Aqaba, on Jordan's tiny strip of coastline wedged next to Israel at the northern end of the Red Sea.

Mystery surrounds the source of the rockets, several thousand of which are believed to be in the possession of Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militant group, Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria.

Jordanian officials have not yet commented on where they think the rockets originated nor who might have provided them.

Hezbollah pounded Israel's north with Katyusha rockets for two decades in a guerrilla war that ended with Israel's pullout from southern Lebanon in 2000, and still regularly fires the rockets from southern Lebanon toward northern Israeli towns.

The group has previously tried to smuggle Katyusha rockets through Jordan into the bordering West Bank to be passed onto Palestinian militants opposing Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Jordanian authorities arrested three Hezbollah members carrying Katyusha rockets in December 2001 after they entered Jordan through Syria bound for the West Bank.

Following intense diplomatic contacts by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, Jordanian authorities returned the three to Lebanon in May, 2002.